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CITY OF GHOSTS Rating:   (out of 5 stars)Director: Matt Dillon Producers: Willi Baer, Michael Cerenzie, Deepak Nayar Writer: Matt Dillon and Barry Gifford Director of Photography: Jim Denault Cast: Matt Dillon, James Caan, Stellan Skarsgard, Kem Sereyvuth, Natasha McElhone, Gerard Depardieu Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew. |
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Review by: Kim
Justice
4/19/03
It seems Matt Dillon thought he might not direct a feature again, because he put about four different scripts into City of Ghosts, destroying any possibility it had to be a debut worth remembering as anything but a muddled mixture of nearly all the genres the medium has to offer. Or maybe the roles of writer, director and star created the schizophrenic break necessary to create what, to me, ends up as mostly a travel tale with no real story behind it.
City of Ghosts begins when a hurricane hits, and the bogus insurance company Jimmy Cremmins (Matt Dillon) is working for can't pay up. Rather than face the impending FBI investigation, Jimmy instead flees the U.S. and heads to Cambodia to find Marvin (James Caan), his mentor and the brains behind the whole operation.
He finds Marvin -- who's got a new deal he's working on -- but also finds that Cambodia is a dangerous and mysterious place where deals change at the drop of a hat and violence is always an option.
You'll note, I hope, that the above film synopsis isn't exactly, let's say, brimming with verbosity designed to inform and create understanding amongst its readers (i.e. it doesn't really tell you much). Well, the film doesn't, either. The aforementioned hodge-podge of genres and plots prohibits any attempt at a lucid cliff note for the film.
Dillon and crew use a ridiculous plot device to get Jimmy over to Cambodia (the insurance scam, for those who need a refresher), leaving me to wonder for the first half of the film what happened to all those people who lost their homes. Jimmy's character asks as much following a questioning session with the FBI, but after that, he doesn't seem to care much, and I eventually figured out I'm not supposed to care either. And it's Jimmy's apathy towards the victims that seems so incompatible with the personality and demeanor Dillon brings to the role. Jimmy starts out as a nice guy and ends up, well, a nice guy. Feel the cosmic aura shift, will ya. If he was such a hard guy, he wouldn't buy some lazy bum a drink two seconds after he sets foot in Cambodia. Maybe Dillon liked his character too much to have the objectivity necessary to see the big picture, and Jimmy's place in it.
My wondering continued throughout the film as I was introduced to plot thread after plot thread. Every time I thought the film was going in one direction, it headed off in another, either ignoring what I'd just seen or not bothering to explain it, even as the credits rolled across the screen. I felt like I was trying to find my way out of a suburban neighborhood and kept steering myself into cul de sac after cul de sac. There was no way out, and no possible way to fully comprehend the points Dillon and the rest of the filmmakers are trying to make.
Confusion galore aside, the cinematography is fantastic. It makes the not-so-shiny-and-new Cambodia look like the beautiful place it probably is, and it also features many locals, as lots of these location movies like to do. It doesn't look as though they spent a bulk of budget on hair and makeup, letting the grit propel the reality they were trying to create, and I think it works.
But probably this film's greatest find was and is Kem Sereyvuth (or Sereyvuth Kem, depending which country you're in), who plays Jimmy's unexpected friend and moto taxi driver, Sok. Apparently, Dillon had been searching for a local to fill the role and was nearly at the end of his rope and only a month away from filming when Kem happened to approach him for a fare (Kem's a moto taxi driver in real life as well). After putting Kem through acting, English, and driving lessons, I think they discovered a great talent, as well as the most fleshed-out character in the film. Kem is the real standout, and he alone is worth sitting through all the bewilderment City of Ghosts creates. Surprising, so is the subtlety James Caan is able to bring to the role of Marvin. The Caan that irritated me so in such films as The Way of the Gun, Mickey Blue Eyes, Bulletproof and Honeymoon in Vegas, with his cocky, "made" man attitude (a holdover from his Godfather days, perhaps?) is nowhere to be seen, thankfully, in City of Ghosts. And he could have gone that way with the role. I can only hope that Dillon made an effort to tone him down, or that Caan realized it wasn't the right way to go. Either way, the film's the better for it, but not enough to save it, unfortunately. Dillon's performance, however, as the star of this self-driven vehicle, waffles from borderline Oscar-worthy to downright melodramatic, leaving me ultimately unimpressed.
And I cannot, with all the knowledge contained in my -- if I do say so myself -- pretty little head, figure out why the character of Sophie (Natasha McElhone) is included. Nor, for that matter, why such attention is paid to the hotel owner (Gerard Depardieu), a local in a wheelchair, or Sophie's friends. I can only imagine that Dillon had met such people in real life during his travels to Cambodia and wanted to include some of the interesting things he'd seen. So write a book about it and include some pictures. Don't waste millions of dollars on a misguided movie that could be better spent on, well, Me.
To wrap this up not so succinctly, the combination of cinematography and Kem's performance makes City of Ghosts worth a viewing. Not worth several, not even, really, worth a full-price admission (take a senior citizen), but worth one sit-through if you can get past the fact that Matt Dillon has fallen prey to First-Time Director's syndrome.
(An MGM/UA release. Opens in NY/LA
on April 25, 2003. Expands to more cities at later dates.)
OTHER STAFF OPINIONS:
Warren (): A convoluted story chock full
of uninteresting characters -- don't quit your day job, Matt.
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