Ambition

This movie has a very good line when terminally-ill father complains that sonny compares his words to the holy words of God in the good book;the story takes place in a bookstore,often the last refugee for the failed (or soon-to-be ) writer.

LDP owns the store and he fires (why? The reason is vague) one of his employees,a clean cut kid ,and he offers the job to a (cured?) serial killer on parole ;he treats him as a friend,probably using him as a character for the book he is writing.There are many plot holes but the final twist takes us off the beaten path ,not a small feat for this kind of low-budget movie;the only thing which is terribly lacking is a genuine director and a screenwriter who could have used some good ideas with better results.Average.

In this rather quirky script and story written by the star of Ambition, Lou Diamond Phillips, Lou is playing aspiring writer Mitchell Osgood who is supporting himself by running a second hand bookshop. He has to have that job because as a writer he's not making it.

Ambition was the first film in which Lou Diamond Phillips plays an Asian American. In his mixed bag of ethnicity, part of Lou's heritage is Filipino and he plays one here. He is also besides failed writer and bookshop manager, closest relative to Haing S. Ngor playing his father and whose health care demands are cutting into his time.

Lou is taking as an inspiration no doubt, Truman Capote and what he did with In Cold Blood, in the way he was able to capture the souls and personalities of a pair of killers. He's got one in mind now who is coming up for parole played by Clancy Brown. Lou goes to some considerable lengths to befriend him and even fires someone at the bookstore just to get him a job.

If you think you've figured out which way Ambition is headed for a conclusion from what I've written you are wrong. The screenplay that Lou Diamond Phillips fashioned here is quite original and will startle you with its conclusion.

What a project like Ambition needed was a director like Alfred Hitchcock. Sad to say it didn't get that. Also it didn't have the biggest of budgets to work with.

Still it's an interesting work and a treat for fans of Lou Diamond Phillips.