It
used to be easier for the Mexican cartels to get guns and ammo when the Obama
Administration was just shipping it down there directly, as part of the
super-well-conceived Operation Fast and Furious. Now they have to go to the
bother of smuggling it themselves. Naturally, when a shipment goes missing it
makes them mean mad. That also spells trouble for a newly appointed Arizona sheriff
trying to maintain some semblance of law & order in Gonzalo López-Gallego’s
The Hollow Point (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
Cantankerous
old Sheriff Leland might be an embarrassing dinosaur, but he was sufficiently
on-the-spot to intercept one of the cartel’s squirreliest gun-runners. Unfortunately,
he wound up shooting the suspect in the process. It was legitimately
self-defense, but it is still sufficient grounds to cashier him out of office
and replace him with Wallace, the returning native son. He will have no
honeymoon period when he realizes his estranged childhood pal Clive Mercy was
the deceased smuggler’s missing partner.
So
yes, the cartel’s nose is a little out of joint. For handy reference, they have
an actual list of people they wanted killed. Of course, Mercy is at the top,
but so is his girlfriend, Wallace’s ex, Marla. As part of their scorched earth
campaign of retribution, they even want Diaz, the sleazebag used car salesman
who brokered the deal painfully executed if he cannot cough up sufficient
financial compensation. Much to Wallace’s disappointment, their assassin
appears to be some sort of uniformed county law enforcement officer. His first
run-in with the professional killer is so painful and scarring, it drives
Wallace to form an alliance with his former rival and predecessor, the salty
Leland.
You
have to give López-Gallego credit for not doing things by half-measures. He
puts Leland and especially Wallace through the wringer and then some. He is
certainly willing to go over-the-top and back again, but there is nothing
cartoony about the violence. It is as brutal as real life along the border.
As
he often has in the past, López-Gallego serves as his own editor on Hollow Point, but he arguably cut it too
cleverly for his own good. He springs too many sudden surprises on the audience,
making us feel needlessly played. On the other hand, he has a keen feeling for
bordertown grit and grime. He embraces elements of the neo-noir and contemporary
western, cranking up the violence to ten and the attitude up to eleven.
In
that respect, Ian “Lovejoy” McShane’s Leland is his not so secret weapon. He
just has a jolly good time strutting and snarling, which is quite infectious. McShane
has always had massive screen presence, but here he just milks it for everything
its worth. Patrick Wilson is stuck being the dour, serious Wallace, but he just
broods like a champion and manages to withstand all the mayhem López-Gallego throws
his way. Frankly he shows a hardnosed side we never knew he had. Jim Belushi is
far less subtle and restrained as the craven Diaz, oozing slime out of every
pore, but that is a good thing in a film like this. In contrast, John Leguizamo
is unforgivably ho-hum as the mysterious cartel killer.
