Ici commence l'enfer

I have to say this film was sort of what I thought it was... I really enjoyed it!

I've seen Sean Penn in a few films now and they're all good. Oliver Stone is one of the finest men in film production. It's visually stunning, loads of mad camera pans and colour blast-outs! The supporting cast are great as well. Billy Bob Thornton looks nothing like him and is away with it, Jennifer Lopez is attractive an alluring, Nick Nolte is totally convincing and great as the wicked husband, Joiquin Phoenix is mad as TNT and possibly the best is John Voight as a blind homeless person!

A great film with a good ending... although I wouldn't like to be any of them!

A good 7/10

`U Turn' is an assault on the senses. But then again, what more can one expect from director Oliver Stone whose innovative brand of filmmaking is often filled with characters that are violent, insane, heroic, and even bizarre. `U Turn' has many characters played by big name actors that intertwine themselves around a central character, in this case, played by Sean Penn (`Casualties Of War'). Ultimately, a film about getting away with murder, `U Turn' is an intriguing blend of story, violence, and strange people. `U Turn' takes place during a hot day in Arizona where we meet our principal character, Bobby (Penn), who is on his way to California to pay a debt to the mob that has helped him in one way or the other. When his car breaks down, Bobby is forced to have a redneck, roadside mechanic, named Darrell (Billy Bob Thornton), fix it. While his car is in the shop, he ends up walking into a local town where he meets some very eccentric people from a blind vagrant (Jon Voight), a drunken sheriff, a hillbilly and his girlfriend, to an exotic woman who sticks out like a sore thumb against the simplicity of the town. Every person he encounters ultimately leads to a conclusion that he could never have expected. Robert Richardson whose superb cinematography has been used in several films of note filmed `U Turn' masterfully. Richardson's craft with a camera can be seen in such other movies as `The Horse Whisperer,' `Snow Falling On Cedars,' and `The Four Feathers.' With its rough cuts, non-steady cam shots, and scenes filmed as the sun glaring down on the actors, Richardson's work gives a harsh and nauseating feel to the film. Stone's direction was excellent. He's an admirable director in that he doesn't follow the mainstream concepts that are commonly seen in most motion pictures. Watching a Stone film is like watching graduate film students show off their work-it's fresh, energetic, and exciting. `U Turn,' undoubtedly, has some of 1997s best performances. Penn is outstanding as a guy who just keeps happening on the wrong place at the wrong time. Jennifer Lopez is surprisingly good in her performances as the wife of a real estate salesman. Lopez seems to have some talent on the screen…unlike her singing career. Her performance in another offbeat movie, `Out Of Sight,' was also good. Nick Nolte is as Nick Nolte does-he's rough around the edges, perverse and violent as the real estate salesman who seems to rule over the sleepy town. Other performances of note are that of Thornton has a slack-jawed yokel mechanic. Joaquin Phoenix (`Signs') as a hillbilly and his simple-minded girlfriend, played by Claire Danes (`The Hours') give the film a hysterical notch. Other points of interest in the film are the score, composed by veteran, Italian, film composer Ennio Morrcone (`Mission To Mars') whose music adds a humorous atmosphere to the irony of the film. All in all, `U Turn' is a film that is gritty and brutal, but entertaining as all hell. ***1/2

This is one of my favorite Oliver Stone films. It has everything (cheating incestuous sex, chopping off digits, a dumb hick mechanic, a blind native American who wants Dr. Pepper all the time, etc etc etc) that a well-rounded movie needs, plus it was completely done in a comic fashion. It is closest to Stone's other film "Natural Born Killers" by way of stylish camera shots and the addition of comedy into a dramatic setting.

Sean Penn brilliantly plays the lead character, whose car blows a radiator hose out in the middle of the Arizona desert, and the closest town is that of Superior, AZ, a dirt-road town with barely 1,000 people living there, if that. Penn goes through hell from the beginning when random characters in the city want something from him and in return, it drives him to try his best to get the hell out of Superior. Everything during his days in Superior is centered around money and the fact that he has hardly any. So he gets schemed into murders, and he gets whatever little he has taken away from him (his train ticket gets ripped up by the local hoodlum, TNT, again brilliantly played by Joaquin Phoenix, and he has several full bottles of beverages broken for different reasons). Therefore, he's constantly running in circles to get out of this town.

There is an all-star cast (back then, and now) of actors: Jennifer Lopez (a better singer than actress), Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Bob Thornton (the best among the bunch as the hick mechanic), Sean Penn, Claire Danes, Liv Tyler (only for a second in the train station), and Jon Voight...all packed into a nice DVD. The music had that comic, light-hearted side to it (with the country sound of a jew's-harp played over violin or whatever, etc) which helped you to see the irony that is driving him to madness in this town. Again the camera shots were awesome, and they had that Oliver Stone quality of the 90's where he would switch frames with the villain of the movie with an animal skull and switch the point-of-view to see what the actors are seeing, and so on.

I didn't like the ending so much. I kind of wanted things to resolve themselves, but instead, things just keep on falling into the bad-luck-category of his life. I also hated Jennifer Lopez's delivery of lines (just like in any other movie with her...The Cell, etc) because they feel so fake and put on that you know the director was just looking for T&A for the film. Also she doesn't play a native American very well. She has a thick accent straying too much towards Latino that you don't pick up on any cultural change until you get the story.

Overall, though, (bad point aside) it is a brilliant movie that is easy to watch if you like the other Stone films. I had to give it a 9/10 for great performances, great music, awesome story, and everything in between. Go out and buy it if your a fan of any of the actors listed above, or if you are trying to find a great weekend film with friends.

U-Turn is about a man named Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn) who is on his way to pay a debt to a gangster when his car breaks down in the small, redneck town of Superior. There, Bobby is taken advantage of by the good IL' boys in every way possible, from the dirty mechanic to the town sheriff. He meets a beautiful girl named Grace (Jennifer Lopez) and falls for her, and she seemingly falls for him as well. From here, there are twists and turns in the plot all the way to the very end of the movie.

Sean Penn was decent as Bobby, but seemed a bit week and was taken advantage of a bit too easily. I guess that was Bobby's character so he did a good job. Jennifer Lopez did not have as big a part as I thought, but she did OK with it. Nothing spectacular, just OK.

The characters that stole the movie, in my honest opinion, were Darrell the mechanic (Billy Bob Thornton) and Toby N. Tucker (Joaquin Phoenix). They had the redneck stereotypes down pat, especially Thornton.

This movie was a decent little thriller. I am glad I did not see it way back when it was in theaters but it is OK for a rental. I give 7 of 10 stars.

As usual before adding my two ha'porth-worth of comment, I looked at other comments (including Roger Ebert). And, although I didn't read all of them (there are very many), I was surprised that none I read seemed to pick up what was perfectly obvious to me: this is a very funny film, but done in a deadpan style. So deadpan, in fact, that I'm not surprised that might be news to many. I have, coincidentally, recently been buying up on DVD quite a few classic film noir (Build My Gallows High, The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers) and like everyone else thought that the era of film noir had come and gone and that such films were no longer being produced. Well, blow me if I'm not very wrong: this is quintessential film noir (though done in colour and with the proviso that most film noir is not intended to be funny). It would be pointless to recount the plot, but if you liked all those classic Mitchum/Bogart/Van Helin/Edwrad g Robinson etc films, you will love this. Sean Penn never disappoints. By the way the very final twist in the plot had me laughing out loud. Go for it: you won't be disappointed.