Catchfire

This film mixes some features rarely found together: mob violence, guns, murder, chases and crashes, a woman in jeopardy... AND some understated humor, would-ya-believe romance and kindness to animals, and a happy ending of sorts.

Dennis Hopper took his name off the cut version, which apparently omits, among others, parts of scenes featuring Jodie Foster's nudity. This is the version I saw, and even thus cut I give the film a 7.

The plot is straightforward: a hitman (Dennis Hopper) hired to kill a woman (Jodie Foster) who witnessed a mob murder gives her the option of staying alive and being "his." Then, since he defaulted on his assignment, they must flee mob reprisal.

My relatively high rating is based on Hopper's direction and on the acting, principally of the two main stars. (Joe Pesci and Dean Stockwell contribute wryly amusing mafioso figures.)

This is certainly not a comedy or romance film, nor is it intended to be. Nor is it "warm human drama." It's not at all slapstick or maudlin.

What impressed me most were Hopper's characterization and the scenes of their developing relationship. Hopper's Milo is a professional killer, a man of little polish (contrasting the wheelchair-ridden Vincent Price as the mob boss).

But a man's a man, for all that. Especially good is a scene early in their relationship, in which the hitman expresses his awed smittenness for his then-captive. His plain-spoken awkwardness shows, low-key, the loneliness and vulnerability of a man who has not experienced much love in his life.

And if you think a woman in such a situation could never respond favorably (albeit gradually), you don't know much about women -- and I don't mean the Stockholm Syndrome(?), that phenomenon of hostages warming up to their captors. The dynamics of their relationship -- the gradual, subtle shifting of their feelings and reactions -- are masterfully but quietly, almost incidentally, portrayed by Foster and especially Hopper. This film is certainly in the European style.

Still, you action fans shouldn't stay away; though not much gore, there is a sufficiency of sinister dread, gratuitous violence, and crashings and burnings.

Backtrack, aka Catchfire, is one of those classic "Alan Smithee" cases, but unlike say David Lynch's Dune it's hard to feel too sorry for the filmmaker in the case of producers fiddling with the "original" vision. Dennis Hopper's original cut of the film was three hours, which is more akin to a move out of Erich von Stroheim; maybe it is genius in its full form, but perhaps Hopper would have been better just taking what is a half-bitter, half-sweet neo-noir with pitch black comedy and crazy romance as a shorter feature. Is the question more that a 3 hour cut may *still* be a mess rather than it's a lost masterpiece? (Originally Easy Rider had a fate like this with Hopper's original cut something like 4 hours, then trimmed to 95 minutes it was great). A Magnificent Ambersons butchering it also is definitely not. No tears are shed over Backtrack/Catchfire's status.

Matter of fact there is a 2 hour director's cut, which somewhat sadly is hard to track down. So, taking into account this 98 minute "studio" cut (studio in a loose term since Vestron is no longer even around), it's bound to have flaws. To give Hopper his credit a lot of this is due to a choppy rhythm; sometimes there's a spectacular cut (i.e. when he jumps from a rooftop it cuts right away to him opening a drawer in a room), and sometimes it really does feel like a little extra detail or moment is excised in favor of keeping the plot going.

It's not a bad plot either, if somewhat typical in the film noir tradition: a woman has one of those freak chance of occurrences on a road as her tires go flat on a highway, and walking along the side of the road she sees in a wasteland a mob hit. The mobsters see her, she escapes in time, goes to the cops, and then when the mob comes by and kills her boyfriend she goes on the run - not taking into account a strange, soulful hit-man is on her trail, more as a stalker than a killer, leading to a very challenging moment halfway where the gears shift in tone.

The first half is fairly fun as a chase movie and has some surprises, mostly in cameos that had me smile (Vincent Price) and shaking my head and laughing like I was having a hallucination (Bob Dylan), with Hopper creating what looks to be another in a line of classic psychos (he has the skill of a puzzle-solver following Foster's trail, and sometimes plays the saxophone to relax). The mood also reflects wonderfully a sense of the noir with Foster changing her look (blonde wig and black jacket) with the conventional jazz music put behind her. When he finally tracks her down, however, there's a possibly great scene: Hopper, with a tie around her neck and handcuffs on her hands, gives Foster a choice, either die right now or be "mine" so that she would be under his total control. There's such tense acting here by the leads that it promises that this will lead to an electrifying second half.

This is not the case. Instead we get a fairly quickly unfolding of a romance, oddly enough, as Hopper's quasi-captive finally falls for her sort of sensitive and awkward hit-man, and there's even a weirdly "cute" scene where Hopper fulfills a secret that she has which is to have lots of pink Hostess cakes! There's a sort of absurdity here that maybe echoes Bunuel; it's kind of sadistically dangerous, and at the same time starts to make less sense even as it ratchets up some memorable, baroque images (the burning figure at night right before Hopper goes into Foster's room to take her sort of hostage). The acting isn't bad either, but again the sense of rhythm is off, and it's hard to look past that as the film is what it is and has to be seen like that.

As a curiosity it's surely a must-see - it's got a who's who of stars and character actors, from Charlie Sheen to Price to Joe Pesci to Catherine Keener to Jon Tuturro to Paulie from the Sopranos - though it's hard to exactly call it a very "good" movie. Too much of it ticks and tocks with a near originality to ignore it, but it's too flawed to see as some work of tortured genius either.

Despite the shameless overacting by almost the entire cast, and, despite the "chop shop" editing of the DVD, and, despite the two famous actors (Charlie Sheen, Joe Pesci) who yanked their names from the credits, and, despite the randomness and somewhat unbelievability of the script, and, despite the movie's tendency to vacillate wildly between genuine tension, dark humor, titillating nudity, and cartoonish situations, in spite of all these potential faults, "Backtrack" is very watchable. It has fantastic on location photography, that only adds to the enjoyment of a somewhat flawed, nevertheless intriguing, and ultimately entertaining movie. - MERK

For about a decade, I swear I saw a number of films with the same trait: trying to make a hardened cold-blooded hit man into a sympathetic softie at heart. Oh, filmmakers just love to make evil look good.

Who better to play a twisted wacko than Dennis Hopper? Here, Hopper has the hots for Jodie Foster. To quickly summarize, the film is pretty interesting but with a bad message, as just mentioned. What's really interesting is the cast. Check this out: Hopper, Foster, Joe Pecsi, Fred Ward, Dean Stockwell, Vincent Price, John Turturro and Charlie Sheen. Obviously, this cast is what primarily makes the film fun for a viewing or two. The more you see it, and analyze it, the dumber it gets so don't see this more than twice....maybe once is more than enough. The dialog is pretty dumb in spots.

This is also unique because they can't seem to figure out how long this film runs. When I first saw it on VHS, the box said it was 102 minutes but it was really between 112-115 minutes. When the DVD came out, it also said "102" but only ran 99 minutes. They must have edited out quite a bit of footage from the tape! It was probably a smart move as the second half of the movie dragged too much. However, I've heard of a case like this with tapes and DVDs.

If that's what you want, you want this movie-- she bares it not once but twice. Or if Bob Dylan wielding a chainsaw is your bag... The script is clichéd and inept, the directing choppy, the excellent cast largely wasted. At least they look like they had fun making it. If it was better written/directed, the basic premise of the abductee falling for the abductor might be more believable. Jodie spends most of her time looking worried, until she suddenly mutates into passionate lover/co-conspirator. Joe Pesci managed to have his name completely scrubbed from the film and the packaging, although his part is not minor. Blink and you'll miss Catherine Keener, apparently in her first credited role. Somebody should put the soundtrack's sax player out of our misery.