Der Fremde

Seeing Dennis Hopper, Gina Gershon, and Dominique Swain (Face/Off, Lolita) is reason enough to like this neo-noir thriller. A bonus is David Murray (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, who plays an ultra-religious scumbag.

What appeared to be a simple case of a girl wanting to keep a drifter in town for her own pleasure, turned into a complex web of deceit and double-crossing that blew up because someone was thrust in the middle.

It was fascinating to watch, but more fascinating to see Hopper as a burned out thief, Gershon as a real bitch, and Swain playing everyone against each other.

I liked the movie. The characters matched the setting perfectly. The characters are shifty and edgy and not quite right as is the decaying off season amusement park where they hover. The movie was possibly too violent at the end but the viewer could see that the rot would never come to a peaceful resolution.Their Low life dreams were well described. I liked the bleakness of the unused boardwalk, the sounds of the rides being tested, the rain bucket which catches water from a leak that would have been there for years. Mary Poppins would not like this neighborhood . And the characters who cling there dream small time dreams...small scores which they think are big but the viewer knows are not worth the effort.

What a flat, boring, unnecessarily drawn-out storyline, complete with equally as baneful acting. Every concept surrounding the characters and the storyline is typical "dark" cliché, and very poorly done at that. Oh, it has its share of typical, exhausted characters: the demented religious zealot, the femme fatale, so on and so on...they are all essentially dull and static. Dominique Swain is totally obnoxious as Kelly, and leaves one wishing that she was the subject of the murder plot. Pierre is hands-down the most boring character in the entire film; he serves as little more than someone to stand there and wait for action in the storyline to come to him. And that clown? I won't even go there. So "there's no happy ending." Yawn. Big deal. What an original concept. It's only been done a thousand times before, and by far better actors and directors. About the only thing this film is good for is curing insomnia. Utterly atrocious.

I was lucky enough to get a preview of this film in London, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's quite a gripping drama/thriller that unfolds against the backdrop of a bleak,non-descript seaside resort as it shuts down for the season. I don't want to give too much away about the story line, but the movie it most reminded me of is The Grifters. The acting quite literally blew me away. There are 3 standouts performances though. I think Dennis Hopper gave his best performance since Blue Velvet. In certain scenes his emotions are so raw you feel it in your stomach--Oscar calibre stuff. Jordan Frieda (Lulu's son) delivers as Pierre the protagonist (and I use the term protagonist very loosely). And David Murray--oh my... This guy just exudes evil as Simeon. Shame that the AFI's list of Greatest Movie Villians has already been published. He will definately make the list when it's refreshed. Simeon is the most complex character in the film and David Murray plays him perfectly. Excellent direction by Jevon O'Neill--he has created quite a haunting movie, with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing until the end and will leave you with a sense of longing for the other half of humanity--the good half.

"Out of Season" is not an unambitious or uninteresting movie. It tries to present six different characters, and two parallel plot lines that eventually cross each other's paths. But this is another one of those movies where the director tries to impose his "style" (tilted camera angles, slow-motion, strange close-ups, etc.) on almost every shot - this is obtrusive and distracting. And he really overreaches when he tries to turn this story of human greed into some kind of "religious" tragedy. Ultimately, it's an unpleasant and (in Dennis Hopper's case) degrading film. Most of the actors do what they have to do to collect their paycheck, nothing more. The standout is David Murray, who plays a convincingly hateful scumbag. Dominique Swain has one or two sexy moments (no nudity though). (**)