No.321 : When the Bough Breaks (1994)

When the Bough Breaks (1994) at the IMDb

We recently watched another ‘When the Bough Breaks and this 1994 version safely occupies the coveted ‘2nd Best ‘When the Bough Breaks’ award’ berth. Indeed if we find the 1947 version I can see this one moving into the bronze medal slot.

This and the 2016 version share only a title, with this effort being a detective thriller that makes no sense, and has no thrills whatsoever.

The film opens with a caption telling us we’re in Texas and it’s the 4th of July - regular captions chart the date as we head towards the 16th which is soon given some significance. Despite it pissing down road workers are digging a hole and teens are partying in the streets, but their endeavours are cut short when a pair of hands is discovered, flushed out of a drain. Cowboy hat wearing sheriff Martin Sheen is puzzled and can’t even offer a witty pun along the lines of ‘need a hand’ or ‘check out the second hand store’.

Instead he calls in FBI profiler Audrey (Ally Walker) who looks like she’s facing a chauvinistic department at first, but everyone turns out to be really helpful. She has Gillian Anderson’s hair off ‘The X-Files’ and as character traits she smokes a lot and is claustrophobic. She also has scars on her back for reasons that were unexplained. It may have been that they were laying character points for future sequels but happily those amounted to one straight to video offering only.

It seems that Audrey is the only one doing any work and she quickly establishes that a pair of numbered hands shows up every year and suspects a serial killer. Let’s hope so, or else a lot of villains must be getting handy. With some proto-internet skills she manages to identify a lot of the victims and soon tracks down a young mental patient who draws numbered hands on his walls. Gotta be a clue there surely? The boy chooses to be a mute, so slowly Audrey manages to get him out of his shell and the case starts to come into focus.

With July 16th approaching, and a girl already abducted, can Audrey solve the crime before another juggling career is destroyed for good?

This was an awful film that made no sense at all. The poster suggests a psychic element which isn’t covered in the film. It does turn out twins are involved but their psychic link is in full HD and never explored.

The detection was all over the place, including the uncovering of a red herring paedophile who drove about in an ice cream van wearing clown make up. Creepy as that sounds there was in fact loads of them working for a franchise. There must be a whole Texan generation of kids with an ice cream phobia! This was so ridiculous it was funny, with a flashback showing a child snared by a ‘free ice cream’ sign.

Despite his prominent poster presence Sheen does very little with all the work done by the dull and unengaging Ally Walker. I think she was let down in the edit however, as all her character’s quirks go nowhere and her breakthroughs were random and illogical.

I knew who the baddie was going to be early on as Ron Perlman was listed as appearing but didn’t show up until 70 minutes! His scenes were dreadful as was the whole finale which was lifted wholesale from ‘The Silence of the Lambs’.

You could argue it was left to the viewer to fill in the blanks, but that would just excuse glaring plot holes and bad writing. Having the mute ‘boy’ played by an obvious girl was a mistake especially as she looked like a young Justin Bieber - why not just use real twins or indeed have the twins be the same sex?

Anyway, I won’t waste any more time looking for nits and plot holes as it’s clear that the production didn’t bother, so why should I?

Te film was unintentionally funny in places, but overall this was just an incoherent mess.

Best Bit : Clown Face Ice Cream - ‘W’ Rating 6/23

No.223 : Wild Horses (2015)

Wild Horses at the IMDb

 Robert Duvall wrote, directed and starred in this contemporary western and had his wife cast in the lead - so is this a showcase for his undoubted skills or a dull vanity project that merits its IMDb score of 4/10?

Duvall plays an ageing Texan rancher who bears the weight of secrets of the past. His gay son’s lover disappeared 15 years previously and a new lady Texas Ranger is keen to reopen the case. What she unearths starts other family skeletons to be rattled from the closet and something has to give.

The film opens in flashback and we’re not clear how the boy died, only that Duvall was there at the time. An undercurrent runs throughout the film that he may have been killed die to redneck intolerances to homosexuality but they seemed keen to skirt round the issue with only passing references to James Franco’s character being gay, and there weren’t any love scenes for him or discussions on his situation. It did shine through that Duvall was the screenwriter as it almost seemed like an old fashioned ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ when the film was crying out for the prejudices to be explored. Still he did duff up some homophobes in a bar, so that’s all right then.

Duvall’s wife Luciana isn’t convincing as the no-nonsense Ranger who smells a Duvall shaped rat and sets her sights on him. English clearly isn’t her first language and her delivery is one note and emotion free. She does get a couple of action scenes, including a low rent car chase, but her part is thin. Her deductions don’t always ring true, but to be fair she says hello to Duvall and straight away he has the hit men on her - not exactly the subtle approach!

Other plot threads that get exposed but not necessarily resolved include corrupt policeman who are dealing drugs with border crossing Mexicans and the paternity of their Mexican looking friend who has lived with them for years but definitely not the result of Duvall getting jiggy with the staff.

The cast was impressive but they get nothing much to do. Josh Hartnett is wasted as the second son and I find it hard to remember any meaningful scene he took part in. The usually good James Franco has nothing to work with in what should have been a good and conflicted character. He seemed nonplussed at his boyfriend disappearing and his reaction at the eventual resolution was muted at best.

I didn’t buy into the dialogue either with lots of improbably moving and articulate speeches being utter by characters who were meant to be red necks or 'good old boy' type farmhands. Duvall talks real slow, as is his way, but he lacked the gravitas and deep rooted resentment that his character was supposed to demonstrate.

Overall this was a wasted opportunity. They had a great cast and locations and a potentially interesting plot, but what was delivered was a flat and wordy borefest that I’ve largely forgotten already.

‘W’ Score - 10/23
Best Bit - Rednecks don’t read the script and start a bar fight