Things to do in Denver when you’re Dead (1995)
Buena Vista / Walt Disney DVD (region 1)
d. Gary Fleder; pr. Cary Woods; scr. Scott Rosenberg; ph. Elliot Davis; ed. Richard Marks; m. Michael Convertino; cast. Andy Garcia, Christopher Walken, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Lloyd, Treat Williams, William Forsythe, Bill Nunn, Gabrielle Anwar, Fairuza Balk, Jack Warden (115 mins)
It is frequent to note the revival in the American crime genre following the works of Quentin Tarantino, to comment on the profluence of hip, stylized and over-scripted genre movies that seemingly erupted.
Thus such works as City of Industry, True Romance (which had a Tarantino script), Two Days in the Valley and Things to do in Denver when you’re Dead are often dismissed as crime-revival knock-offs. This dismissal is unfair and in the case of the last film mentioned above has been strenuously protested by the director, a debuting Gary Fleder. Indeed, Things to do in Denver when You’re Dead comes from an intriguing background – a screening at Cannes giving rise to expectations of a hybrid of crime and art-house movie – and from a heavily stylized script that Fleder was quick to point out was in existence before Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs captured audiences and critics. Perhaps the film of Things to do in Denver when you’re Dead thus came out a little too late, so that its quirky individuality seemed no longer as original and fresh as it had when in script form. Indeed, the film now occupies something of the mid-ground between these hip, stylized urban thrillers and the triumphant highs of such as The Usual Suspects, best evident of the young director’s emerging (but ambiguous) penchant for slick amorality.
This film concerns a criminal enterprise gone wrong. A sleek Andy Garcia plays Jimmy the Saint, a former gangster who now operates a business offering the dying the chance to videotape their words of wisdom for the benefit of their future generations.
The unusual business is not doing well. Wheelchair-using gangster boss (Christopher Walken), simply known as The Man with the Plan, has a plan: his dim-witted son has been arrested on child molestation charges and Walken believes that if his son can get back together with his former girlfriend, then everything will be all right. However, there is a new guy in this girl’s life. Walken thus pressures Garcia to get together a “crew” and perform “an action not a piece of work” and scare off this rival suitor. Garcia agrees and gets together a motley band of losers (including Christopher Lloyd, Treat Williams, William Forsythe and Bill Nunn) involved in an elaborate operation. The target proves difficult and the action gets out of hand, resulting in two deaths. When Garcia reports back to Walken he is told that he and his crew are doomed to “buckwheats” (slow deaths) although offers Garcia a chance to save himself, but not his friends. Garcia chooses to remain and warns the others about their impending fate – now he must wait and put his house in order before hired killer Mr. Shhh (Steve Buscemi) arrives.
A peculiar aspect of amorality runs through this movie, beginning with the treatment of pedophilia, contrasting the actions of a would-be kidnapper / molester with the attraction Garcia has to barely legal women (the elegant Gabrielle Anwar and the street whore Fairuza Balk).
Indeed, Garcia’s joint preoccupation with being lover and father finally forms the means of his escape from fate, or at least his continuation in a sense. Fleder is a director aware of the inherent amorality of the characters and their plight and determined to stylize it, but is still able to manipulate the viewer into feeling something for these dislikeable people – the key to this is the sense of empathy with the doomed and if this is accepted the film works, if not, it remains a slick and un-involving exercise in hip genre film-making. Despite his superficial coolness, Garcia here is something of a goof, a man wrestling to control his own destiny and finally unable to do so, partially by his own silly and even somewhat improbable miscalculations. His plight eventually matches the others – the need to make their peace with, somehow cheat, or resist at all costs, their own impending fate. Thus in its latter stages, with people stalked by a seemingly omniscient killer, the film explores the desire to challenge fate, to escape death.
It is a despairing film about a world beyond conventional morality, where codes of honor and loyalty have eroded into madness – the flotsam and jetsam of the genre seeking one last collective action but doomed to failure.
Garcia’s choice of crew is personal – these are his friends – and his plight in the latter stages is his awareness that his actions may have just doomed them all. His struggle with responsibility finally leads the film into its thesis of the despair facing people who realize they have screwed up their lives beyond repair. Feelings of loss, fatalism and the desire to leave something behind predominate this exploration of a state of mind described as “living on borrowed time”, and the film’s constant referrals to “wisdom” are most ironic. Indeed, the dearth of wisdom seems a subtext here as if these dying people really have nothing to offer or leave behind, despite Garcia’s almost pathological desire to do so. The fear of ceasing to exist thus runs through this work, skewing it towards the downbeat. But with such a gallery of eccentric characters and such a stylized approach to dialogue, this film also works as an amoral black comedy, with knowing filmmakers testing just how much they can manipulate the audience’s responses to truly bizarre people. Indeed, of all the works in the 1990s crime revival, this film is simply the most grotesque. That perhaps is enough reason to cherish it.
DVD DETAILS
VISION
The visual transfer on this Miramax release is engaging and professional, perfectly preserving this stylized, smooth film, fluid and glossy throughout. Colors and textures are kept downcast and formal for the most part with costume being a measure of character and idiosyncrasy. Despite the cold look, bright primary colors are well used and the contrast between hot and cold combines with a stress on movement vs. constriction for a fine visual study of contained and loosed emotions for which Garcia is perfectly cast. Sophisticated in look and feel, this is an elegant and artful film but somehow distant and compassionless. Night scenes are well rendered and there is a frequent reliance upon colored lights and tints in the background to scenes, as if rising to bathe it and then gone again as the film moves on: hot and cold sometimes thus compete for attention and color is mostly associated with a shadowy world, blunted by overcast daylight. Reflective surfaces are also nicely integrated into these cold textures. Individual locations are well rendered, particularly the malt shop which becomes a hang-out point for these misfits. The transfer preserves the film’s visual intricacies extremely well as the film becomes a most unusual and distinctive blend of the grotesque and the sentimental. The final visualization of an idyllic reunion is somewhat touching – maybe there is hope beyond death?
SOUND
One of the delights of this DVD is the sound transfer, available in a stunningly detailed and often complexly subtle 5.1 mix with excellent directional effects and fullness when needed. With telling song selection punctuating the movie, it manages a crisp atmosphere with precise levels: each set has the atmosphere and individuality of ambient sounds necessary to introduce the gallery of characters. The detail of this ambience is well captured by this DVD and is often surprisingly delicate in intention for a film of this genre. Unusual details (corpses used as punching bags for example) add considerable texture. The rainstorm effects for the crime-gone-wrong scene add to its pivotal nature. However, what remains the main attraction in this case is screenwriter Scott Rosenberg’s stylized and peculiar approach to dialogue, his invention of an entire, self-contained hip dialect for his criminal underclass, removing it from any level of reality. Although this adds a level of peculiarity to the proceedings, it is also an alienating device to some degree, a self-conscious look at how the stylization of language can evoke genre, although the final film as released resists any label of deconstruction, despite its theme of disintegrating events. Clever use is also made of Jack Warden, whose explaining voice gives his scenes in the malt shop the quality of a chorus, another Brechtian alienating device. Overall, it has a progressively melancholic feel. The title song by Warren Zevon is briefly heard over the end credits.
SPECIAL FEATURES
In the way of special features are an original trailer and a brief production featurette which features input from Rosenberg on the oddness of the script, from Garcia on his character and in which director Gary Fleder implies his fascination with irony and amorality – he concludes by adding that he sees this film as a modern fable. In addition is a “film recommendations” section, offering no previews but a random poster selection of six other DVD releases from this distributor. More special features would have made this a collector’s item.
