Touch

"Touch" sticks Ulrich at the center as a young man with stigmata and maybe something more...healing power, the second coming, whatever. Around him are sundry characters ranging from mildly peculiar to very peculiar who want to use his questionable power to suit their own agendas. This unfortunate flick appears to be telling a story but fizzles in the end. A very unsatisfying, forgettable watch and a waste of a good cast. In short, a flop.

`You are an odour in the nostrils of God,' jabbers religious zealot August Murray (Tom Arnold). He is damning sometime revivalist Bill Hill's (Christopher Walken) cynical marketing of Christ-like figure Juvenal (Skeet Ulrich essentially playing Edward Scissorhands minus the blades). Hill wearing a glitzy gold jacket and an enormous `Thank You Jesus' necklace sees a book deal and a slot on the awful Debra Lusanne Show (Gina Gershon superb at mimicking Ricki Lake with a snarl) for the innocent healer, who has stigmata on his rib cage.

In lesser hands than Paul Schrader, Elmore Leonard's non-crime novel could have become an overwrought toil in the evils of America's salacious media. However, Touch is actually a wryly amusing and unhurried look at faith and exploitation. The histrionics and belly laughs are bestowed upon the cameos, who obviously capture the best lines: `Do they make condoms that protect the soul' (Arnold) and `Controversy is the oxygen I breathe' (Gershon). Ultimately, best savoured on video. --Ben Walsh

Interesting characters and a great cast, but the script really left them with nowhere to go. Bridget Fonda was lovely and I will check out her work in other films (last one of hers I saw was Doc Hollywood in 1991). Will also keep a lookout for Skeet Ulrich who brought a nice blend of charm and mystique to the role of the central character. Christopher Walken is competent as usual, but this is not the sort of part I enjoy seeing him play. Tom Arnold did a good job as the obsessed religious fanatic. I found the labeling of this movie as a comedy strange, but it is hard to say how else it should be categorized. It is definitely a subtle and wry brand of humor. I don't think I laughed aloud even once. One thought provoking thing about the movie is that it shows that people can do good things without being wholly good, and bad things without being wholly bad. That may sound obvious, but too often movie characters are one-dimensional. For example if someone is exploitive (especially in a comedy), they also turn out to be evil to the core. A better script with some added time for plot development would have made this a much more satisfying picture.

I did not start watching this movie as an Elmor Leonard novelization come to film. In fact I wasn't aware that it was a Leonard novel until I just accessed this page. This said, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I originally checked it out of the video store because of Christopher Walken's involvement, plus I had seen an interview with Bridget Fonda on the making of the movie, and found the concept to be intriguing. I found the characters, acting and direction on target for the subject matter, the way that recent journalistic direction and everyday cynicism would effect the life of a person with real God-given talents. The experiences that Juvenal goes through are realistic, as are his reactions. Definitely grist for reflection, and I'm an atheist. All in all, don't go into this movie expecting it to be something it's not, and you won't be

While TOUCH may not be up to the level of GET SHORTY, OUT OF SIGHT, or JACKIE BROWN, it's not a bad little movie. Certainly it's an odd book from Leonard, as he admitted in his introduction, but it worked for me, and given Paul Schraeder's history with religious themed films(TAXI DRIVER, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST), it seemed natural he would direct. This is not a great movie, because Schraeder doesn't go as deep as Leonard did into his characters, and some of the humor doesn't translate. But most of it does, and this avoids the heavy-handedness of most movies about angels/healers/devils. Part of that is due to Skeet Ulrich, who should avoid hearing Johnny Depp comparisons after this movie, because he shows a personality all of his own. And Bridget Fonda pairs up nicely with him. This movie even gets a good performance out of Tom Arnold. All in all, underrated and deserves checking out.