director/screenwriter
John Herzfeld
producers
Herb Nanas
Jeff Wald
cinematographer
Oliver Wood
music
Anthony Marinelli
editors
Jim Miller
Wayne Wahrman
cast
Danny Aiello (Pizzo)
Greg Cruttwell (Hopper)
Jeff Daniels (Strayer)
Teri Hatcher (Becky)
Glenne Headly (Susan)
Peter Horton (Foxx)
Marsha Mason (Audrey)
Paul Mazursky (Peppers)
James Spader (Woods)
Eric Stoltz (Taylor)
Charlize Theron (Helga)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 104m
u.s.
release: September
27, 1996
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other john
herzfeld films
reviewed on this website:
- 15
minutes
|
Like
a politician near election time, 2 Days in the Valley
tries to be so many things that it ends up not being much of
anything. Sometimes it's a self-consciously "hip,"
quirky crime movie. Sometimes it leans towards tearjerking drama
(and falls flat on its face). Sometimes it's funny, most often
not. One constant is its lovely cinematography (by Oliver Wood).
Another is its utter insignificance.
2 Days is clearly this year's attempt to strike gold in
the West Coast a third time, after last year's Get Shorty
and (of course) 1994's Pulp
Fiction. These films boast characters you only meet in
movies (or in L.A.), and 2 Days gives us hit men (James
Spader, Danny Aiello), vice cops (Eric Stoltz, Jeff Daniels),
a suicidal movie director (Paul Mazursky), an Olympic skier (Teri
Hatcher), an art dealer with kidney stones (Greg Cruttwell),
and a nurse (Marsha Mason). A nurse? What's this, an everyday
person? Get her out of here!
The plot, by writer-director John Herzfeld (a veteran TV-movie
director whose main claim to theatrical fame was the awful John
Travolta/Olivia Newton-John vehicle Two of a Kind), trips
over itself trying to link all these characters. Mostly, it doesn't.
The hit men pay a visit to the skier's ex-husband (Peter Horton),
looking for money. Spader double-crosses Aiello, who escapes
and stumbles onto the art dealer's house. Everybody else gets
shoehorned into the plot, largely thanks to coincidence.
Yes, I know: Pulp Fiction would have been nowhere without
coincidence. But at least Quentin Tarantino had the courage of
his ironic convictions. It didn't matter that we didn't take
those plot twists seriously; nothing else in the movie was meant
to be taken seriously either. But Herzfeld's ironic detachment
falters. He fumbles for pathos in scenes involving the despondent
director Mazursky and vice cop Daniels, who misses his little
son, taken from him by divorce.
Daniels' character is the film's oddest inconsistency. For most
of the movie, the vice cop is defined almost entirely by his
obsession with busting a newly opened massage parlor. Why? The
parlor doesn't figure in the story. Midway through the film,
he's wrapping a birthday gift for his estranged son and reading
a letter declaring him unfit to serve on the force. This is the
first we hear about either of these problems; it's also the last
we see of Daniels. Classic sign of severe pre-release trimming.
The movie works up to a nasty climax that never comes; mostly
people just shoot each other, and Teri Hatcher throws herself
into a vicious spandex catfight with Spader's squeeze (Charlize
Theron). Some guys may find this arousing; I found it embarrassing.
John Herzfeld is yet another director who sees women either as
violent babes or maternal blankets to keep men warm (for instance,
Glenne Headly as the art dealer's assistant, who falls in unlikely
love with Aiello).
Two actors rescue 2 Days from complete tedium. Aiello
has fun with his balding, canine-phobic hit man. And James Spader
lends the movie more gravity than it earns. He manages to be
both threatening and laid-back. But sometimes actors subtly lie
back out of a movie they dislike, and I suspect that's what Spader's
chilly, detached performance is about. Can't say I blame him. |
