DIRECTOR
Tarsem
Singh
SCREENWRITER
Mark
Protosevich
PRODUCERS
Julio Caro
Eric McLeod
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Paul Laufer
MUSIC
Howard Shore
EDITORS
Robert Duffy
Paul Rubell
CAST
Jennifer Lopez (Catherine Deane)
Vince Vaughn (Peter Novak)
Vincent D'Onofrio (Carl Stargher)
Dylan Baker (Henry West)
Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Dr. Kent)
Musetta Vander (Ella Baines)
Patrick Bauchau (Lucien Baines)
James Gammon (Teddy Lee)
Jake Weber (Gordon Ramsey)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 107m
U.S. release: August 18, 2000
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
website
|
Not
so long ago, calling a movie visually stunning actually meant
something. Today, though, even films shot on video can look quite
good, and computer imaging enables a Mac to do what it would've
taken a crew of fifty to do ten years ago. When applied to science-fiction
or fantasy films, the "visually stunning" accolade
is even less impressive. Such films are supposed to pack
a visual punch; saying they're great because they look cool is
like saying a glass is great because it holds water. Many of
us, though, would rather see a story that holds water,
even if it has meat-and-potatoes visuals.
Which brings us to The Cell, a visually stunning dud that
holds no water whatsoever. Ironic, since the titular object is
a huge glass container in which women are trapped until water
fills the space and drowns them. This is part of an elaborately
vicious fetish of serial killer Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio),
who kidnaps women, stashes them in the aforementioned cell until
they drown, then soaks them in a tub of bleach to give them a
baby-doll look, then hovers over their corpses by hooks in the
flesh of his back, then dumps the bodies for the cops to find.
Who does that? Why all this Dr. Evil stuff? Why doesn't
he just shoot women in the head and bury them somewhere, like
a normal serial killer? And what does Carl do for a living
that enables him to afford this amazing deathtrap? What
is he, Batman?
Carl has another woman somewhere, awaiting death by drowning,
but just as the FBI are closing in on him, Carl suffers some
sort of massive brain fart and goes into a coma. Problem: He's
the only one who knows where the endangered woman is. So the
FBI sit down and, I imagine, have the following conversation:
FBI Agent #1: Okay, we gotta find out where he hid this
woman before she drowns. Should we put extra manpower on this?
Put out an APB? Ask questions? Use our deductive skills? Work
overtime until we turn up a lead?
FBI Agent #2: Nah, let's get Jennifer Lopez to wander
around in his head.
And so it is done. Lopez, playing an experimental psychologist
who pokes around inside the psyches of the comatose, is recruited
to delve into Carl's inner sanctum for clues. There she finds
Carl as an innocent boy -- see, the movie is saying, killers
aren't born, they're made -- and also Carl as some kind
of demented Lizard King of slaughter. Apparently Carl's inner
life is influenced by Kabuki theater and the music videos of
Tarsem Singh (REM's "Losing My Religion"), who has
directed The Cell like a man screaming in your face every
20 seconds, "Look what a visual genius I am!" Lopez
wades through many nonsensical, pompous, gradually annoying dream-logic
scenes that are, of course, visually stunning.
Vince Vaughn also turns up, sleepwalking through his performance
as an FBI agent who accompanies Lopez into Carl's mind and comes
out with a clue he hadn't spotted in the real world (take
the guy's badge away and make him clean toilets at Quantico,
say I). If not for that one clue, the dream sequences would be
utterly pointless. Actually, they do have one point: to
show us a whole lot more blood and women in bondage than the
movie could've shown if it had stuck to reality.
Not that it sticks to reality even when it's in reality.
The Cell is this year's pretentious sci-fi freak-out show,
following Dark
City and The
Matrix, two other visually stunning scriptless
wonders. While Vaughn tracks down the increasingly desperate
woman (FBI choppers and cars speeding across the frame, just
like in The
Silence of the Lambs and Seven),
Lopez is still in Carl's head, and I kept thinking, Why is she
still there? Her work is done; can't she just go home
to her cat and get stoned watching Fantastic Planet some
more? But no, Lopez stays in Carl's head to redeem him, I guess,
and put him at peace. Meanwhile, no matter how nicely Lopez is
treating Carl's inner child, his victims remain just as horribly
dead. But, hey, at least his violent misogyny is visually
stunning. That makes it okay. Right? |
