Le Fan

I had every expectation of this film being terrible and mearly a paycheck for De Niro. But, it was great. Snipes and Del Toro are fantastic. De Niro is scary as hell as well. There was not one explosion in the entire film. That was great. Short, to the point fight scenes. That's all you need in a suspense thriller. It was much smarter than expected. The plot never made you feel sorry for De Niro. The idea of him being a sad stoned cold man was there. But, not dwelled upon. The focus was on his obsession with the game of baseball and that became more important. Snipes had his entire sideline story that eventually involved De Niro. But, the two stories themselves were great. Benicio Del Toro is sneaky as hell and you never understand his true personality until he is offed. It makes you look at him completely different when he was not around.

Gil Renard is an unemployed knife salesman who has one burning ambition in life -- to be exposed as baseball's biggest fan, or, more accurately, as hitting sensation Bobby Rayburn's biggest fan. He will go to any length to protect his hero from the media and all other ramifications that stem from being paid an excessive $40,000,000 a year to play with the Giants. And this dedication to perfection, as his ex-boss puts it, is what leads to his partial schizophrenia and almost complete absorption into the world of an over-hyped celebrity. But when Renard realizes that his efforts and 'kindnesses' are not appreciated by his #1 idol, he turns on his role-model and viciously hunts him and his family down to the film's final climax.

7/10

Is it just me or does this film share so many of the aspects that the King of Comedy made over ten years earlier? Both of De Niros characters are losers who have a dream, both are unlucky in love, both have short tempers when pushed, both have obvious disorders within their mind and both are obsessive 'fans' of bobby rayburn and jerry langford, respectively. Stalking and kidnapping occurs in each film by De Niro, of his respective hero but neither hero actually gets hurt. Though in the King of comedy he is funnier and probably a nicer guy!

A flawed movie, but worth seeing for De Niro's performance as Gil Renard, an increasingly crazed fan/stalker. Also, yet again, baseball shows itself as the sport most able to provide striking visual metaphors for the ups and downs of life (though, as a Brit, I've noted some of the specific criticisms aimed at the baseball sequences in this movie by IMDb commenters from the US).

Where the movie, via the genius of De Niro, certainly succeeds is in convincingly demonstrating how easily and quickly obsessive devotion can turn to obsessive hatred, when the object of that devotion fails to meet the assumptions of the extreme fan. Certainly, there's some of Max Cady, the Cape Fear psychotic, in his portrayal; but there's also a lot of Rupert Pupkin, the confused kidnapper and would-be comic from King of Comedy - both films, of course, directed by Martin Scorsese.

Where the film fails is in being too repetitive and, consequently, a bit too long; one or two of the scenes where Gil is trying to sell his knives are superfluous; and, when Gil is at the game with his son, why does the camera have to keep cutting to the woman in the crowd - once or twice would have been sufficient. Several of the scenes also seem derivative, especially those involving Dan Butler, as Garitty the sales manager, which echo Glengarry Glen Ross. A major unconvincing aspect is that surely a $40m signing, like Bobby Raybourn (Wesley Snipes), would be surrounded by a lot more razzmatazz than simply one not-too-effective agent (John Leguizamo).

But, on the whole, one to rent or watch on TV (as I've just done) if nothing more compelling is available.

While I agree with some of the previous comments about the lack of attention to detail and the confusing cinematography, I really did enjoy this movie. The story itself is not particularly original and the ending is weak -- but I thought the build-up of Gil's (De Niro) character to be quite effective. Although Gil was what one would typically label a loser, I couldn't help but feel for the guy. Many movies about psychos/stalkers fail to give you any insight into why he's doing all these bad things -- all you know is that he's not a nice guy. This movie did a great job of portraying how Gil's volatile personality, his obsession with the baseball and with Bobby (Snipes) in particular, and his loss of everything else that mattered to him, ultimately led him to do what he did.