JohnMcFetridge - 12 January 2009 08:34 PM

pbenjamin - 12 January 2009 07:48 PM

How did I miss this?  Looks like I have an assignment.  Any more details, like which theatres, etc.?

Phoenix? Why don’t they test this in Toronto where they made it?

well, have a good time, let us know what it’s like.

I have found 3 theatres so far, all in the detestable suburbs.

Arizona Mills 24
Deer Valley 30
Superstition Springs 25

I think I saw a commercial on TV for it last night during a Seinfeld episode but I was unable to verify due to an obscure bug in DVR software which prevented me from rewinding what I was watching.

pbenjamin is our only reporter on the scene in Phoenix.  Perhaps he will learn how the all important Phoenix test determines if a movie should go nationwide.  After all, what the people in Superstition Springs think is vital to a movie’s success, not to mention Deer Valley.  The theatres should be jammed with people coming in on the train from Yuma and arriving by stage from Contention and Benson.

Sorry, but you can’t get here by train.  Nearest passenger service is in Maricopa.  Not sure about the stage.  Got a shiny new light rail system which runs through the middle of town though.

Really surprising that there is no more urban or artsy venue.  I assumed it would play the Camelview, which tends to show more obscure films, and I was hoping for the downtown theatre (Arizona Center, which I live near).  Hopefully there will be something in Friday’s paper about it.  Bill Goodykoontz or Randy Cordova ought to review it in the Republic, anyway.

I heard there was a previous cut of the film that was 130 minutes (even after they edited out Johnny Knoxville). The one they’re releasing is 84 minutes.

I’m very curious to know which one John Madden showed Elmore a while back and Elmore approved of.

If Killshot is 84 minutes it means that it was cut again probably by the Weinstein Company.  The version that Elmore saw last was 100 minutes.  They’re probably just going to leave the scenes with Mickey and chuck the rest.

‘http://www.azcentral.com/ent/movies/articles/2009/01/23/20090123killshot0123.html

Killshot’
by Bill Goodykoontz - Jan. 23, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
Who knows what Mickey Rourke was doing during his self-imposed exile from the Hollywood hot list?

Who cares? Whatever he’s doing now he should stick with. He follows up a career-saving performance in The Wrestler with an understated yet compelling one in Killshot.

Rourke plays Armand “Blackbird” Degas, a mob hit man who makes a life-threatening mistake. While on the run from the mob, he winds up helping psycho bank robber Richie Nix (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) rough up a Realtor; things go awry, and the men are seen by Carmen Colson (Diane Lane) and her on-the-outs husband, Wayne (Thomas Jane). 

Not good for the Colsons. They’re moved into the federal witness-protection program so Blackbird can’t find them.

Good luck with that.

What happens next seems far-fetched (or, should we say, even more far-fetched). That makes the strength of the film rest almost entirely upon the performances. Luckily, they’re uniformly good, if not great.

Blackbird’s grandmother is Native American, something that both plays a role in his makeup and leads him to the reservation, looking first for a place to chill out and later for more nefarious business. Blackbird is haunted by an earlier job that went wrong, which presumably is the reason that he tries to be so careful to cover all his tracks when working. It also explains why he’s willing to put up with Richie, all non-stop braggadocio - he reminds Blackbird of his younger brother.

The film is based on an Elmore Leonard novel; putting the Colsons’ marriage in trouble gives the story an extra element. New identities give them a chance to start over, to reinvent themselves. Can they? And once danger passes, can they go back to their former lives? Will they get the chance?

Gordon-Levitt overacts wildly, yet in some scenes - not all - it works. Lane is dependably solid, making Carmen the most levelheaded character of the bunch.

Except, maybe, for Blackbird. We’re evidently supposed to sense some sort of bond between Carmen and Blackbird, yet director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) never really finds it.

It’s ultimately Rourke who makes the film worth watching. Always a fascinating actor, the miles of wear on his face makes him even more so now. Blackbird is a killer, yes, but he adheres to a set of rules, however twisted. He thinks of himself as a man of honor, after a fashion - at least when it serves his interests.

The role, the movie and the performance don’t measure up to The Wrestler. But Killshot serves notice that The Wrestler wasn’t a one-shot deal, that Rourke is back doing work that demands notice.

Road Dawg:

I merged your thread of the Killshot review.  I do not favor the creation of new threads for reviews, since the purpose of The Dutch Forum is to create discussion not just dump data, which is what I do on the blog.  Plus, I don’t like splitting threads.  We have a Killshot conversation going already so I like to keep things organized.

I get all the Elmore Leonard news daily from multiple sources, including the aforementioned Killshot review, so figure I will be posting something that newsworthy during the course of the day, so be patient.  If you see something obscure or local which may escape the Google-bots, by all means post it, but please follow my loose guidelines.

Got it. Thanks.

I find it humorous this movie is being billed as the ‘follow-up’ to The Wrestler.

The review was at the bottom of the front page of the Movie Preview section.  The main review was of Waltz with Bashir, which Goodykoontz gave 4.5 of 5 stars (Killshot got 3.5).  His column, also on the front page, concerned The Dark Knight opening at the IMAX.  Goodykoontz is a rather strange critic.  He started out as a columnist in the Sports section and was the TV Critic before the previous flim guy died.  He holds certain beliefs (his own) to be self-evident, and repeats them often.  His contention that The Simpsons is the best show ever to be seen on television is a good example.  Whether you agree with these gems or not, they recur at such a frequency that you can almost write his reviews for him. 

There is a quarter page ad on Page 2, with quotes as follows:

AN UNRELENTING THRILLER - KTVK-TV, Craig Outhier

MICKEY ROURKE PACKS A BIG WALLOP, filmintuition.com, Jen Johans

IT HITS THE BULLS-EYE - CLIPS-TV, Roger Tennis

The two other theatres are Mesa Grand 24, and Chandler Fashion 20.  All theatres are suburban, either in malls or power centers.  (Actually I am guessing about Mesa Grand, I know nothing about Mesa, don’t go there unless I have to.) 

The KTVK review (2 of 4 stars—KTVK is an independent TV channel), apparently taken from Good Morning Arizona, is here:

http://www.azfamily.com/video/hollywoodhighlights-index.html?nvid=324674&shu;=1

Thanks for the on the scene reporting.  I hope you get a chance to see the movie,  If you do, time it.  I think they cut it again from what I saw which was supposed to be the final final.

I guess with the limited release, the film will never make it to Japan.

So I have seen the film, and I liked it a lot.  After what I had read here I was prepared to be disappointed so I was pleasantly surprised with what I saw.

I should explain that I am probably the last person who should be reviewing a movie, my tastes are all over the map.  My favorite movies include such as The Big Lebowski, American Beauty, Pulp Fiction, Casablanca, Field of Dreams and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  I did not like The Dark Knight. 

And when I see a movie that is based upon a book that I have read, I have no ability to do anything but compare it to the book.

Some of the casting was a bit off.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt was too young to be Richie but in my mind he pulled it off.  Rosario Dawson was horribly miscast as Donna and I couldn’t get past it.  I should point out that most of the film was pretty faithful to the story and a twentysomething latina bubbling about Elvis and Graceland just didn’t work.  I also had some issues with Diane Lane as Carmen.  She just didn’t play her blue collar enough for me.  Her roots were supposed to be Port Huron and Algonac but she played it like Grosse Pointe. 

Which brings me to one of the things I liked the best.  The settings were not changed.  Detroit, Algonac, Walpole Island, they did not get changed to make the audience more comfortable with something familiar. 

Mickey Rourke did a great job of portraying Armand, as did Gordon-Levitt as Richie.  A lot of the dialogue was unchanged.  The story stayed pretty close to what I remembered.  The relationship between Carmen and Wayne (played creditably by Thomas Jane) was structured a bit different but the dynamics were the same.

The Missouri part was very brief, there was nothing about the witness protection program guy harassing Carmen. 

I am not real sure what the makers of this film thought was wrong with it.

I saw it at Arizona Mills.  It is an outlet mall, which is appropriate given the way the movie has been handled.  It is in the town of Guadalupe, which, although now swallowed up by the suburban sprawl, is the traditional home of the Yaqui indian tribe.

The multiplex stall that it was shown in seats about 100 people.  I counted roughly 40 heads, which is not bad for an R-rated movie at such a venue at that time in the afternoon.  The film started at 2:40 and the credits rolled at 4:10.  The credits, which included Gregg’s name in the “Thanks to” list, lasted 5 minutes, so it was either 1:30 or 1:35 depending upon how you count.  I did not file out with the rest of the folks since I wanted to see the credits, but the people that I did overhear were speaking positively about what they had seen.

Thanks for this, a good review. the Rosario Dawson one seems like it would be tough to get past. I thought they’d probably changed the character completely and it sounds like maybe they should have.

“Killshot” buried in the desert

Variety

...
However, barely releasing a film in one of the nation’s most popular retirement communities…

-Stuart Oldham

What an uninformed load of crap.  For the record, the median age in Phoenix is 30.3, as opposed to 31.6 in LA and 34 in NYC.  There were a lot of things wrong with the release, but this being a “retirement community” was not one of them.

I’m hoping we’ll at least have an extended ‘director’s cut’ on the DVD.