Ponto de Partida

It's the Christmas season in L.A. Rose Johnny (Jessica Biel) is a drug-addicted stripper at Velvet Larry (Patrick Swayze)'s sleazy strip club with a coma kid in the hospital. Her dog escapes from her motel room and gets run over by shy mortician Qwerty Doolittle (Eddie Redmayne). Jack Doheny (Ray Liotta) is just released after 25 years in prison. His former boss Randall (Kris Kristofferson) gives him a suitcase full of money and directions to Rose Johnny. Charlie (Forest Whitaker) is a suicidally depressed ex-priest. He picks up transsexual prostitute Lexus (Alejandro Romero) and offers her his life savings of $50k to kill him with his gun. Doolittle is struggling for money and Charlie shows up offering the same deal. Waitress Sally (Lisa Kudrow) tries to show Charlie some kindness.

These characters are all lost. There is an emptiness in these characters and quite frankly in this movie. The actors try their best but filmmaker Timothy Linh Bui can't really pull it all together. The scattered nature of the narrative diffuses any tension. It just fails to maintain my interest in these people. Somewhere in the first half, it needs to reveal the connections and the backstories.

'Powder Blue' tries hard to be effective but for the most part it falls flat. The film is about four isolated lives which at some point during the movie, connect with one another. Yet, the stories are half-baked and theatrical and the characters actions hardly make sense. Moreover they're loaded with cheesy dialogues that are poorly delivered. The characters beg the viewer's sympathy but I found myself caring less for what happens to them. 'Powder Blue' tries to be like 'Magnolia' and it grossly fails to reach anywhere near the superiority of that movie. Forest Whitaker appears too whiny. His best scenes are those with Kudrow. Ray Liotta perhaps has the best role and he does a fine job here. Jessica Biel has her moments of good acting and abysmal acting but she proves to be a very good dancer. Eddie Redmayne looks confused most of the time. There are small appearances by Lisa Kudrow, Kris Kristopherson, Riki Lindhome, and Patrick Swayze but their characters lack development. Swayze is barely recognizable and he successfully provides comic relief. Lisa Kudrow delivers the most natural performance as she stands out in a small role (in my opinion, a role too small to do justice to her immense talent). I liked how the film was executed, mostly under a cold colour tone reflecting the gloominess of the atmosphere and the cold Christmas weather. The use of digital camera also gives the film a raw look that adds to the scenes. 'Powder Blue' is not among the worst films but it seriously needed rewriting because now it is almost very much a half-baked and insipid soap opera

The comparisons to Crash (a great film) are inevitable. Powder Blue has a stellar cast in a story that is really a collection of stories that sometimes interconnect.

Forest Whitaker, Jessica Biel, Ray Liotta, Lisa Kudrow, Patrick Swayze et al. populate the dark world of Powder Blue. From the first scenes, we realize that this world is filled with crime, violence and poverty. This world becomes a "character" in the sense that it has as much (or more) to do with the motivations and actions of the characters as other characters do.

The first character introduced is a man, played by Forest Whitaker, who is living on the edge of desperation and hope. As the stories develop, we find that most of the characters are similarly dealing with issues of mortality and day-to-day negotiations with an uncaring world. Everyone is hurting.

Most viewers can probably identify with the sense of desperation that pervades the movie, either because they have experienced it or because they were in situations that could have taken them down a dark path. Thus, the film has an inherent honesty. Some viewers may not want to visit the demons that this film will resuscitate. But there are positive moments and acts of kindness in Powder Blue. For some viewers these moments may "redeem" the movie.

Overall, the acting is excellent. Although I thought Jessica Biel embodied her role as a mother who strips for a living, I felt that a few of her scenes were less convincing.

No doubt this movie had potential. The cast offers a handful of well-known actors, several of which are more than capable of good acting (Whitaker in particular is usually superb). Unfortunately, most of the well-known stars in this film only had bit parts. Kristofferson, Swayze and Kudrow each maybe have five lines of dialogue in the entire thing. There were several scenes in the movie, one in particular near the end, which simply had no business being in the film at all. Even worse, NONE of the characters' back stories were developed whatsoever, something which may have actually prevented the story from falling completely flat.

This film will obviously be compared to Crash and The Air I Breathe, as I've seen already in several other reviews. Just because a story is "gritty" and emotionally charged does not make it good or even entertaining. This film was plagued by the same issues as The Air I Breathe: mediocre writing, unnatural dialogue and virtually no character development. Crash was successful because it had character development, the story was poignant and somewhat believable, the film itself was artfully edited and the dialogue was well written and very well acted. As the audience, we need to be able to suspend our disbelief in order to accept a "strangers' lives intersecting" type of plot. I had no problem suspending disbelief in Crash. Not the case with Powder Blue.

Putting comparisons aside, was it the worst film I've ever seen? No. In fact, it was still considerably better than The Air I Breathe. The music and cinematography was actually above average. Liotta's character was disappointingly wooden (no surprise there). Whitaker probably did the best he could. Biel definitely offered a brave performance and appeared to really pour herself into her role, although seemed to lose momentum in the end. Bottom line: don't go into Powder Blue with too high expectations.

My rating: 7.6

It was better than expected. It definitely reminded me of "Crash" and especially "The air I breathe" with multiple story's, drama and the city atmosphere, it has a similar feel to it.

Despite a few REALLY cheesy scenes in the end, it really was entertaining all the way trough. The acting was good, most noticeable by the mesmerizing Jessica Biel and the always strong actor Forrest Whittaker.

Biel has a few nudes scenes in the movie which was done very tasteful and very sexy ! and if you didn't think much of her before, you most like will be in love after watching her dance :-). Too bad this is probably the only thing this movie will be known for, as it lacks serious promotion and probably will go straight to DVD.

Hope it will do good, just spread the word I guess.

It should find it's indie audience I'm sure.