Hey folks, Harry here... ol Max California has been with the site for a while now, and ta boot I see him from time to time, though he haunts both coasts and the space between. He's one of those everywhere and nowhere sort of fellas that could be over your shoulder from second to second.... watching and listening.... in this case he was watching and listening to CLETIS TOUT a hitman comedy with Christian Slater, Richard Dreyfuss and the amazing talents (sic) of RuPaul! Joy... Here ya go
Hi Harry
Caught a test screening of CLETIS TOUT tonight, the first time this movie has been shown for an audience. It was actually a workprint screened on video and the blurry picture quality left a lot to be desired. I'm going to throw in a few SPOILERS here so watch out...
The movie is an oddball mix of crime caper and romantic fairytale. Tim Allen plays a hitman called Critical Jim (any relation to Things to do in Denver's Critical Bill I wonder?) who is obsessed with movies and has a film quote handy for every occasion. He captures his latest assignment, Cletis Tout (Christian Slater), and while waiting for payment to come through for the hit on Tout, Jim asks him to tell him a good movie story to pass the time. So Tout tells him about recent events in his life...
Tout isn't really Tout, he's Finch, an escaped con. In prison, Finch befriended a magician (Richard Dreyfuss) who stole some diamonds in the middle of his magic act. They escape together, and with the help of a mortician (an amusing cameo from Billy Connolly), they take on fresh identities. Finch's new ID is Cletis Tout, a sleazy tabloid journalist who was recently killed for a tape which incriminates a mobster for murder.
Dreyfuss meets up with his daughter played by Portia Di Rossi(?), but before they set off to recover the diamonds he hid away, Dreyfuss is killed by two inept hitmen who were actually gunning for Tout. (These two guys also killed the real Tout). When the hitmen fail to kill him a second time, the mob calls in Critical Jim for the job instead.
From here on, the movie shifts gears a little from crime melodrama into cutesy romance between Slater and Portia, as he sets out to recover the diamonds. It might seem a strange mix of genres, but it seemed to work ok. So did I like the thing? Yeah it was not bad. It's a pretty low key movie that isn't going to be a blockbuster, but its an entertaining enough diversion. It felt kind of tv movie-ish, maybe the video projection didn't help though.
The very first scene in the movie was of two hitmen discussing Deliverance and why the hillbillies didn't wait for Burt Reynolds instead of settling for Ned Beatty. Alarm bells went off in my head when I heard this, I thought uh-oh, not another post-Tarantino hip hitmen talking about movies kind of thing, but thankfully this was the only scene where this sort of thing happened. There is a bit of pop culture referencing in there for sure (my favorite one being Jim remarking that Slater reminds him of Jack Nicholson! Aha, self referential irony!), but the movie manages to stamp out its own personality.
As Jim Jarmusch said, calling a movie "quirky" happens way too often, but this is Quirky with a capital Q. The dialogue is mostly standard cops and hitman talk, spinkled with Critical Jim's movie quotes, and the directing doesn't call attention to itself (it was written and directed by Chris ver Weil...a quick check of the imdb reveals he hasn't done much else).
Now for Chris ver Weil and others, in the questionnaire at the end, they asked should the scene in the subway stay in the movie? Yes! It was one of the best scenes. Critical Jim chases Tout into a subway only for Tout to escape on a train. Jim then berates some gangsta graffiti artists for no apparent reason, but it was cool anyway. I must mention that the romantic theme music was REALLY corny...it was like something out of a Barbra Streisand movie. I assume it was temp music, let's hope so anyway.
So overall it's not a bad little movie, and at 90 minutes it certainly doesn't outstay its welcome. Like I said, it's pretty low key and maybe it would fit cable better than the big screen, perhaps as one of those movies you find yourself watching at 2.30 am when you can't sleep. But if you like your romance mixed in with mob hitmen and ex-cons, then this will fit the bill for you.
Max California
