SUNSET (1988) *** I shouldn't have been so surprised at how good this was, I should have had a clue when the opening credits included Blake Edwards, Henry Mancini, Malcolm McDowell. I guess I just didn't see how they were going to work with Bruce Willis and James Garner. Silly me. For most of the film Willis and Garner offer up the kind of self-indulgent and -absorbed cowboy repartee you might expect, buttressed by some very good lines. Garner seems a bit tougher of the two, but he's Wyatt Earp so he's supposed to be, and I think Willis wants it that way, too. It's all entertaining enough but then, at a point where you wouldn't bother using the term denouement to describe anything that might happen thereafter-just as it becomes apparent that they're at the first annual.-the writers start firing with both barrels. Is it allegory or is it parallel dimension? I don't know enough about Charlie Chaplin, Tom Mix or Hollywood in the '20s, but I do know that it's good enough to make you start wondering. Not as great as Johnny Guitar or Convoy , but those are the (un)obvious points of reference and that's a pretty exclusive league. Jennifer Edwards does an excellent job as the stimulated beyond submission society smash, hooray for nepotism!
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