The Keeper

Keeper, The (2004)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Lifeless thriller about a deranged cop (Dennis Hopper) who kidnaps a stripper (Asia Argento) and holds her hostage so that he can teach her how to be good. You'd think having Hopper play a nut and Argento a stripper that some magic would surface but that's not the case as this thriller lacks any suspense and instead enters the "so bad it's mildly entertaining" level. The badness of the screenplay and dialogue allows for plenty of unintentional laughs. Both Hopper and Argento are good in their roles but I really wish the screenplay had done more with their talents. The direction is pretty bad so this here is for fans of the actors only.

It's truly odd how individuals who can't seem to master simple grammar and syntax will unabashedly critique a movie as if they have the cinematic genius of Roman Polanski.

If you fall into the category of viewer who thinks a film just isn't gosh darn entertaining unless things are "blown up real good", then by all means, give this one a pass. However if you don't spend your day breathing through your mouth and admiring your unibrow, then you will probably find this film to be the entertainment it aims to be.

If there's one type of role Dennis Hopper has down, it's that of a restrained nut job. And in this movie he gets to sink his teeth into the meaty role of a supreme nut job by playing a twisted small town sheriff who thinks he can convince a woman to fall in love with him by abducting her and locking her in a cell in his basement.

Heavily dialog driven, Hopper at times carries this film on his back with his highly compelling performance. Asia Argento, the daughter of Italian horror director Dario, is easy on the eyes and does a perfectly capable job in the role of the captive. Veteran Canadian actress Helen Shaver, surfaces as an equally unhinged groupie to Hopper's character, and her scenes with him eerily evoke fleeting similarities to that of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, Canada's infamous serial killer couple.

The film is capably directed by Paul Lynch, who has made a career out of directing Canadian-filmed US television shows, something which isn't a leap considering that this film was shot in British Columbia.

Overall it's a pretty decent and entertaining little movie. It will hold you to the end and not leave you feeling ripped off. As for some of the other reviewers of this film, well, let's just say it's probably time that they changed the batteries in their singing wall-mounted fish and sat down to some more engaging entertainment.

This Canadian 'maniac cop'-type thriller inaugurates a lengthy series of movies that I plan to watch throughout this month in tribute to its hell-raising star, the late Dennis Hopper. His co-star here is the equally notorious Italian starlet Asia Argento who, portraying a stripper that instills dubiously redemptive tendencies in Hopper, shows that she still has trouble in shedding her heavy accent which needs to be excused by making her an émigré. The presence of these two (who appeared together again a year later in George A. Romero's LAND OF THE DEAD) would have been enough to entice me to watch this modest effort somewhere along the line but, thankfully, the screenplay adds a few interesting touches to the overly-familiar COLLECTOR scenario.

In fact, Hopper has a sideline in puppeteering which he exploits by touring schools in an anti-drug campaign (which, knowing Hopper's highly-publicized drug-fueled antics of the past, makes for the ultimate irony); to further complicate matters, one of the teachers (Helen Shaver) has a big crush on him and wants to manage his 'career' and turn him into a household word!; Hopper's junior partner starts getting in too deep into Argento's disappearance and, inevitably, getting on Hopper's nerves; and, finally, an escaped serial killer who has been hunting down Argento's 'colleagues'.

Unfortunately, director Paul Lynch's (of the original PROM NIGHT fame) thoroughly uninspired handling deadens most of the impact that these subplots might have had and it is left to the two lead actors – but mostly Hopper (whose mania is predictably explained as being caused by a religious-fanatic-of-a-cop dad), since Argento's predicament limits her movements (although she still gets to do a pole dance over the opening credits sequence and have a couple of gratuitous showers along the way!) – to keep non-discriminating viewers watching.

The Keeper is a story about a young dancer who gets abducted and imprisoned by a corrupt police officer, who's assistant desperately tries to solve the case of the dancer. The plot is quite OK here, but nothing special or surprising. The acting by Dennis Hopper is great, and he really blends the movie with his insane character (officer Krebs). I suppose what didn't made this movie "do it" for me was the poor development here. It all starts out cool, but the further the plot develops the worse it gets. In the end, it feels like everyone and everything has just freaked out and what is left to digest is nothing. 4/10 because of the performance by Hopper and this movie might be "OK" entertainment if you have nothing else to do (or watch).

So here's an example of a movie that's easy to dislike, since it shamelessly rips off "Lady in a cage" and "The Collector", was done on a shoe-string budget with five to six cameras running during one scene and it has Lochlyn Munro in it. It's got all the creative looks of your typical movie-of-the-week and Asia Argento may be one of the prettiest faces, but her acting abilities are zip to zero. Nevertheless I have seen much worse. The Keeper is done fairly tongue-in-cheek with quite a wry, witty sense of humor and Helen Shaver is in fine form giving a performance so hammy she 's entering Vincent-Price-terrain. And Hopper doing his Hopper-routine is always more entertaining than watching any of those lame-assed method actors. O.K. for the price of an overnight rental, but you won't write home about it. 4/10