The Hollow Point: Ian McShane vs. the Cartels

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.

Hollow Point could have been one for the ages, but the cheaply mean-spirited portrayal of a devout Christian character dampens its good vibrations. Still, anyone who appreciates flamboyant swaggering ought to get a load of McShane doing his thing. Recommended for fans of modern westerns and border war thrillers, The Hollow Point opens this Friday (12/16) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Brits Behaving Badly: 44 Inch Chest

An aging football hooligan with a broken heart is not a pretty sight. At least Colin Diamond has friends willing to help make things right by kidnapping his wife’s lover. In between the beatings they inflict on the poor other man, they cuss up a blue streak and generally get on each others’ nerves in Malcolm Venville’s 44 Inch Chest (trailer here), a dark little morality play opening tomorrow in New York.

Aside from his money, middle-aged Diamond is not much of a catch, but he evidently loved his wife Liz with genuine ardor. When she announces her intention to leave, he completely breaks down mentally and emotionally. Fortunately, his mates have just the cure: the offending “Loverboy” tied up and ready to be killed at his leisure.

It is not exactly clear what Diamond’s friends ordinarily do for a living, except for Meredith, who seems to be something of a professional gambler with a Noel Coward demeanor. Naturally, he gets under the skin of Old Man Peanut, a homophobic, misogynistic misanthrope. Despite his smarmy exterior, Mal also seems to have an ocean of contempt bottled up inside him. Even Archie, the faithful mother’s boy, has no reservations regarding the premeditated execution of London’s unluckiest French waiter.

No one would ever want to spend any length of time with this ferocious Fab Four, but as on-screen heavies played by four of the best British character actors working in film today, they are jolly good expletive-laden fun. Ian McShane (a.k.a. Lovejoy) delivers Meredith’s cutting dialogue with panache, investing the film with an electric magnetism and sinister charm. As Peanut, John Hurt is compulsively watchable. Gaunt and twitchy, he looks like a feral cat and projects and similar sense of ill contained menace. Though their characters are not quite as sharply drawn, Stephen Dillane and Tom Wilkerson are unsettlingly effective conveying the not-so latent sociopathic impulses of Mal and Archie, respectively. The weakest link of Inch might actually be Ray Winstone, who does not leave nearly as strong an impression as the psychologically challenged Diamond.

Had Inch simply focused on its contemptible but entertaining supporting cast, letting them start at the beginning, strutting and cursing their way through to the end, it would have been a very satisfying picture. Unfortunately, the script by Louis Mellis and David Scinto (the writing team responsible for Sexy Beast) craters under its own narrative pretensions, leaving audiences to wonder ultimately what was the point of all that.

Though too clever for its own good, the intense supporting performances from the Gang of Four certainly give Inch a distinctive flair that is never dull. Still, viewers should be specifically warned, the film’s profane language makes Mamet’s dialogue sound like a Hallmark Channel original production. It opens tomorrow (1/29) at the Village East.