director
Tony Scott
screenwriter
Phoef Sutton
based on
the novel by
Peter Abrahams
producer
Wendy Finerman
cinematographer
Dariusz Wolski
music
Hans Zimmer
editors
Claire Simpson
Christian Wagner
cast
Robert De Niro (Gil Renard)
Wesley Snipes (Bobby Rayburn)
Ellen Barkin (Jewel Stern)
John Leguizamo (Manny)
Benicio Del Toro (Juan Primo)
Patti D'Arbanville-Quinn (Ellen)
Chris Mulkey (Tim)
Brandon Hammond (Sean Rayburn)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 116m
u.s.
release: 8/16/96
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other tony
scott films
reviewed on this website:
- domino
- spy
game
- true
romance
|
Is
there anything more soulless than a thriller that plays with
you just for the sheer bullying sake of playing with you? Any
idiot can tighten the screws by, say, putting a cute kid in danger
... or how about this: putting a cute kid in danger from
Robert De Niro! What genius! The Fan, which stars De Niro
in his 500th whackdoodle role, is professionally made and sharply
acted across the board, but it's still a bummer -- more ugly
and depressing than haunting or suspenseful.
Gil Renard, De Niro's latest wingnut, is a schlumpy knife salesman
whose life is falling apart. His one remaining passion is baseball,
and when his favorite player, hot-shot Bobby Rayburn (Wesley
Snipes), joins his favorite team (the San Francisco Giants),
Gil is in heaven. He projects his fantasies onto Bobby; in Gil's
fracturing mind, the dreams and agonies of his life crystallize
around the superstar. For about the first hour, De Niro comes
through with a suffocatingly real portrait of a lost soul. No
actor does implosive psychosis better than the man who played
Travis Bickle. But when things start going wrong for Gil, and
he becomes bitter and violent, De Niro falls back on the menacing,
crinkly grins he overworked in Cape Fear. And the film,
which began as a compelling parallel study of two men at opposite
ends of the rainbow, becomes junky and crude -- a flashy splatter
movie.
The Fan has been around before in various permutations;
in one of its previous lives, it actually had the same title,
and starred Lauren Bacall as a Broadway diva hounded by nutcase
Michael Biehn. Celebrity stalking is a sad and relatively new
subgenre of the slasher movie. The villains are pathetic, lonely
wretches who yearn to slash through their anonymity. Material
like this needs to be handled seriously (Taxi Driver)
or as black comedy (The King of Comedy, I
Shot Andy Warhol). Otherwise, the horror comes across
as callous and pointless. The director, Tony Scott (True
Romance), teases us with shots of Gil fondling his knives,
readying us for future carnage. The Fan doesn't miss a
trick. We feel nothing in particular for Bobby until he turns
out to have an adorable little boy, who might as well have "Kidnap
Me" stamped on his forehead. These are all standard slasher-flick
gimmicks.
Gil is enraged that the high-paid Bobby, idolized by millions,
doesn't care much about the game itself -- that baseball is as
cutthroat a business as Gil's knife company. What exactly does
Bobby owe his fans? At times, the movie comes dangerously close
to endorsing the murderous Gil's disillusioned view of Bobby,
who takes the American dream for granted. Near the end, when
everyone runs around trying to stop Gil, The Fan becomes
"serious" and hypocritical. Tony Scott puts us in the
position of enjoying De Niro's detailed performance, but then
he turns Gil into a monster waving a bat or a knife, so that
we can also savor his inevitable death. Gil dies for our sins
of idolatry, I guess. There's something pathetic and sick about
The Fan, and it isn't Gil. |
