Breathless

I can't believe there's only ONE review for this movie! I just saw it and have so much fun from beginning to end that it's almost impossible to describe!

Within its genre this movie is a masterpiece, this movie is...PERFECT! Black humor from the word GO, relentless, suspenseful, hilarious... it has EVERYTHING!!! On top of that its script is so clever, SO CLEVER that you don't have an idea.

Everything came out as round and smooth as that crystal skull they found in Perú (or some place like that) and it's --they say-- several thousand years old, but with a surface so smooth that only could have been polished with a laser beam. This is exactly the impression I got from this film, sheer perfection!!!

Convoluted script, because it consists of several layers, layers the director peels away, one by one, like a superb magician and you look like a dumb child, the trick being performed in front of your naked eyes but you don't see the obvious tricks until towards the end when the whole puzzle starts getting its pieces in the right places and you close your open mouth saying: "Well... I'll be darn... so that was the way it happened"...

I tell you, incredible.

As incredible as the acting, because the idea is quite difficult to put through and make it believable --truly believable-- otherwise, with mediocre actors, this film would have crumbled from the very beginning, and these crew was superb (maybe with a small reservation for Val Kilmer, over the top in his overacting bit, fortunately in a cameo part) but the two women were fantastic.

Yet you get to know the characters little by little, small gestures, ticks, reactions to one another according to the dialog, situations, doubts, a myriad things, and yet, you are fooled from beginning to end, one step unfolding its real meaning until the next step unfolds a new, unexpected surprise, till the very last frame!!!

One of the best movies I've ever seen, and I hate movies with this kind of characters that speak with those accents and live in those places and listen to that kind of music!!!

Granted, it isn't "Pantaleón y las visitadoras" (2000), "Barry Lyndon" (1975), "Death in Venice" (1971), "L'ínnocente" (1976), "Tous les matins du monde" (1991), "Blade Runner" (1982), "Le scaphandre et le papillon" (2007), "Los otros" (2001), "Tom Jones" (1963) -- I just mentioned a few of the many movies I admire and will stay with me forever more, but again, considering the characters, their place under the sun, their music and their speaking accents... this movie is TOP DRAWER. (And I myself have the nerve to talk about accents in English...!!!).

Fun, intelligent, full of plot twist, comical, good performances, lots of blood, betrayals, thief who steals thief... Well...

The main problem with Jesse Baget's 'Breathless' is that it takes itself too seriously thinking that it's slicker, cleverer and funnier than it actually is. The weak script is perforated with holes. The dialogues try to be clever and funny but they hardly impress. A movie like this really needs to sustain its tension and element of suspense but every breath that 'Breathless' takes is predictable. Moreover, the pacing drags especially the dialogue ridden scenes that after a point sounds like mumbo jumbo. Of the performances, Gina Gershon does a fine job. Kelli Giddish performs adequately. Val Kilmer is funny in a brief role. Ray Liotta is far from his best. Production value looks quite good. All in all, 'Breathless' is lacks the life to sustain the viewer's attention. For a dark comedy, its just not that funny.

Lorna (Gina Gershon) is convinced that her no-good husband is responsible for a recent bank robbery. She enlists the help of long-time friend, Tiny (Kelli Giddish), to help find the money. In short order, Lorna has her husband tied to a chair and shoots him in the head. Now, in addition to finding the money, Lorna and Tiny have a body to dispose of.

I had never heard of Breathless until it was recommended to me by a streaming platform. The plot summary sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a whirl. Overall, I wasn't very impressed. The main problem I had is that the film is never quite as smart and funny as it wants to be. I felt like Lorna's ramblings were meant to evoke a Tarantino-like feeling, but the writing's just not clever enough. In fact, I found much of the dialogue-heavy first half of the film a bit boring. It wasn't until the scene-stealing PI (played spectacularly by Wayne Duvall) showed up that things got interesting. So, even though I liked much of the second half of Breathless, my overall enjoyment had already suffered as I was ready to throw in the towel at about the 45 minute mark.

Finally, I generally like Gina Gershon, but I didn't care for her as Lorna. She gives her all to the role, but for me, she seems miscast. I don't see her as a housewife living in a single-wide in the middle of nowhere Texas.

4/10.

"We are in Texas there are no accidents. There's alive and there's dead." Lorna (Gershon) is very upset with her husband Dale (Kilmer) after years of prison for robbing convenience stores he is free. She finds out that he has robbed a bank and she is upset because he isn't sharing with her. She calls her friend "Tiny" (Giddish) over to help her though her problem but things go from bad to worse. I have to say that for the most part this was a pretty entertaining movie and it made me laugh a few times but it is not anything really good. The humor is the "redneck" type of humor like the kind in "Raising Arizona" but it's not quite as funny. I've said for a while now that Val Kilmer has really gone downhill for some reason. While this is his best (and by that I mean only watchable) movie in a while his acting is terrible. Ray Liotta has been going down that road too but his acting is actually decent in this movie. This is nothing amazing but it is pretty funny in a very dark & I shouldn't be laughing at this kind of way. Overall, not a bad way to spend an hour and a half. I give it a B-.