Starting
out as a western writer but eventually hitting his stride with crime novels, Elmore
Leonard has a reputation for his sharp dialogue and lethal characters. Notable adaptations of his work include Out of Sight, Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, and
3:10 to Yuma. Indeed, the bard of badaassery’s support for
a new big screen treatment of his work factored prominently in the Tribeca Talks panel discussion following
the special screening of Charles Matthau’s Freaky
Deaky (trailer
here) during
the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
Originally
set in the 1980’s, Matthau shifted Freaky
to the groovy 1970’s at Leonard’s suggestion. About to be transferred out of the bomb squad,
Det. Chris Mankowski does not exactly kill himself trying to save a
booby-trapped gangster. Still, it looks
rather bad. Relegated to vice as a
result, Mankowski takes the call when failed starlet Greta Wyatt files a rape
report against wealthy creep Woody Ricks.
Talk about a discordant way to kick off a supposedly madcap romp.
Initially,
Mankowski downplays the legal recourse available to Wyatt, but he decides to
rattle the nutter’s cage anyway. He is
not the only one with his sights on the antisocial weirdo. Demolitions expert Skip Gibbs and his friend-with-benefits
Robin Abbot blame Ricks for their own scrape with the law, for reasons that are
hazily glossed over. To get to him, they
will use his brother Mark as the tool he so obviously is. Meanwhile, Mankowski develops a personal
interest in Wyatt and a sort of-kind of professional rivalry with Ricks’
bodyguard-fixer, Donnell Lewis.
Once
you get past the unseemliness of the film’s catalyst, it is a breezy enough distraction. However, despite the vintage cars and occasional
file footage of Viet Nam or Watergate, it never really gets inside the 70’s
mindset. This was a bizarre period of time,
when millions of Americans were joining Est cults and taking Erica Jong
seriously. By comparison, though not
exactly a classic, the film version of Serial
(released in 1980) is far more successful capturing the vocabulary and
attitudes of the era. (It also offers
the opportunity to see Martin Mull playing off Sir Christopher Lee). Still, there is one appealing era-appropriate
in-joke. In a nod to the director’s father, every
movie theater seen in Freaky is
showing a Walter Matthau film, which might well have been possible in 1974.
Frankly,
what distinguishes Freaky is the
unusually eccentric cast it assembles, including Crispin Glover, Andy Dick, and
Christian Slater. It begs two questions:
how did they manage to insure this production and where was Tom Sizemore? Perhaps he was already locked-in somewhere
else. While it is nice to see
blaxploitation veteran and former Bond girl Gloria Hendry, even in a small
bone-thrown-to-genre-fans role and Michael Jai “Black Dynamite” White does his
thing as Lewis, it is relative newcomer Breanne Racano who shines the brightest
as femme fatale Abbot, clearly understanding villainesses should enjoy being
devious.
