THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD (1995) **1/2 The black humor suggested by the title is there every once in awhile, but at least as often it veers blindly off towards Reservoir Dogs. It's their business what kind of film they want to make, obviously, but when they go too far down those certain roads I'm not the answer to "who cares." It's well done, just not particularly enjoyable. I say it's well done, and it is, except for the occasional hole in the plot big enough to drive a convoy through. Christopher Walken is Mr. Big Time Mobster, and he leaves his dumb kid wandering around bowling alleys in the middle of elevated hostilities. There are more. Walken would be the first guy I would have thought to cast in his role (John Turturro is next, after which the part can't be cast), but he's not as scary or even eerie as I would have expected. Some of it is his haircut, which isn't inherently silly-in fact there's nothing wrong with it at all, but it definitely belongs in a different movie. Andy Garcia's good enough that his character makes some sense, whoever wrote this definitely spent some time there, not just another Hollywood schmuck who writes dog movies on Mondays and gangster scripts on Tuesdays. Andy's posse may all be vulnerable to charges of cartoon (Christopher Lloyd, Treat Williams, a little bit), but I think they transcend by enough to make the call. My most mixed thoughts are on Gabrielle Anwar. It didn't seem like she did that much, but she filled an important role perfectly: the girl next door, Ms. American Normal. No, not the mythologized one that drinks milkshakes on Saturday night, but a real one, quietly desperate for something other than the options she's being shown, ready to take chances and not about to ask someone how if the opportunity presents itself. The film's not about her much, but she's a spectacular metaphor for an electorate willing to embrace, at various times, over drinks, the likes of Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan. I wouldn't be able to make a better film, but if I was trying to I would have accentuated the funny stuff, and let Walken go down in a blaze of emasculated glory. Might have cut at the realism some, but I don't think it would have been that much less realistic, overall.
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