"Dead Man" (18s) Light House
The independent American director Jim Jarmusch brings his hip, urban sensibility to a new subject with this stylish, dark and occasionally very funny Western, starring Johnny Depp and featuring a clutch of stars in cameo appearances. Depp plays Bill Blake, a callow young man who arrives in the hellish frontier town of Machine to work as an accountant at a sawmill. But his prospective employer (Robert Mitchum), knows nothing about him, and is too terrifyingly mad to enter into an argument with. Already out of luck, Depp gets into even worse trouble when he is accused of killing a man. Carrying a gunshot wound which may prove to be fatal, he becomes a fugitive in the unfriendly wilderness, pursued by bounty hunters.
As with Jarrausch's other films, the plot - such as it is - of Dead Man is rudimentary and episodic. Characters amble into the story and exit at random, usually by being killed. As Depp makes his way through the desolate landscape, he meets up with a vagrant Indian named Nobody (Gary Farmer), who proceeds to confuse him with his namesake, the poet William Blake. Together, the two come across various oddball personalities (including the venerable rocker Iggy Pop dressed in a frock) as they search for their destiny. Gradually, Depp turns from young innocent to seasoned killer.
This is by no means a straightforward Western, and fans of the genre may recoil in horror, but those who appreciated Jarmusch's earlier films should enjoy his uniquely idiosyncratic style here. Rabby Miller, Jarmusch's regular cinematographer, cam poses landscape shots of quite stunning beauty in glowing black and white, and Neil Young provides a scare every bit as peculiar as the rest of the film - grungey power chords that echo into distant feedback. As with the William Blake reference, Jarmusch lays an the symbolism with a trowel, but fortunately he never takes himself too seriously. The result is one of the most interesting and unusual Westerns in a long time, and Jarmusch's best film since Down By Law 10 years ago.
"Last Dance" (15s) Ambassador, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs
The Australian director, Bruce Beresford has a reputation as a good director of women, which is presumably why he was chosen for this anti death penalty drama, with Sharon Stone as a convict on Death Row. One might see it as bad luck for Beresford that Tim Robbins got in ahead of him with Dead Man Walking, but there's really no comparison to be made between Robbins's intelligent, moving film and this unfortunate, badly scripted melodrama, in which Stone plays a convicted murderess who has been appealing her sentence for 12 years.
With every avenue exhausted, the final decision rests with the state Clemency Board, which sends an inexperienced young attorney (Rob Morrow) to go through the motions of the final appeal. As Morrow gets to know Stone, he becomes convinced that there are extenuating circumstances to her crime, and that she has been rehabilitated during her time in prison. He sets out to prove grounds for clemency, and to have her sentence commuted.
Sharon Stone's quest to become a respected actress, which received a boost with her excellent performance in Martin Scorsese's Casino, isn't helped by her role here. You can see why she was attracted to the part - there's no glamorous makeup or sexy designer clothes to distract from her performance - but she has no chance of rising above the TV movie of the week inanities of Ron Koslaw's script. Her relationship with the young attorney is unconvincing, largely due to Morrow's insipid performance. Beresford can't really do much with this dull material, but he could have tried harder with the finale, which is only marginally less ridiculous than the spoof movie ending in Robert Altman's The Player.
