Fall Time

Rebellious post-high school buddies Tim (Jason London), Dave (David Arquette), and Joe (Jonah Blechman) are in the middle of their last summer together. Tim is off to college in the fall, and wherever the other two wind up, it will not be in the same place he will be. So the three of them, the bored threesome decide to pull of their most elaborate prank of all time. The plan is simple. Tim, all decked out in a nice suit that makes him slightly more than conspicuous in a small town like Caledonia, Wisconsin, will stand on a street corner near the bank, while the other two pull up fast in their black Buick (stolen from Dave's cruel father) and pretend, with blanks, to gun him down in the street, toss him into the trunk and speed away. After this reports about the Buick will be all over the news, and Dave's father will have a heavy dose of explaining to do. But while they plan the lark, ex-cons Florence (Mickey Rourke), and Leon (Stephen Baldwin) are planning to rob the very same bank. When the boys mistakenly abduct Leon (who is dressed in a suit similar to Tim's), and in effect, foil the crime, the stronger Florence immediately hunts down the suspicious Tim, and strong-arms him into assisting in the heist without Leon. Leon, meanwhile, once out of the trunk, easily detains Dave and Joe, and begins a paranoid investigation of their true motives before forcing Dave to reel off a conspiracy tale about himself and Florence, exactly what the very edgy Leon wants to hear. Leon, who is shown through his homosexual relationship with Florence (which began while the two served time) as being subservient and pliant, explodes when given the opportunity to call the shots for the two young boys, and becomes unhinged to the tune of torturous interrogation scenes that are almost too emotionally painful to watch. What follows is a violent, icy depiction of loss of innocence in the Eisenhower America, which ends the only way it can, with bodies on the floor. Though the film, made in 1995, was denied a theatrical release by co-stars bickering over billing, director Paul Warner spins a tightly wound tale of a adolescent joy-ride that goes awfully wrong. And perhaps the most interesting spin on the script is the parallel between the subservient relationship of Leon to Florence to the hero-worship Joe holds for Dave, and even paralleling Leon's treatment of the boys with the relationship of Dave to his father. This amounts to a perverse little twist of script that Freudians would love, where the two criminals do serve to provide a sort of perverse fathering of the children. The young cast is outstanding, exuding the requisite disbelief and innocence we expect from these boys. A particular standout is Arquette, who I previously did not feel could act his way out of a paper bag. Mickey Rourke is absolutely chilling as Florence, and Baldwin gives perhaps even a better performance than he did in The Usual Suspects, an absolutely brilliant turn as the explosive Leon. In all, Fall Time is a very good movie that snuck through the cracks, and is well worth a look if you can find a copy.

Ambitious in its use of Gay leads (no overtones here, completely in your face), period setting, and crazy goings on. The Movie starts sort of weak with overacting by the three teenagers wildly flailing about and trash talking incessantly. But once our two ferry-land psychos enter, the thing sort of becomes entertaining in a low rent hoodlum kind of way.

Although it goes to some length to be 1950's kitsch some of the props look like modern thrift shop and antique store borrowings as they are worn out and do distract somewhat from believability. But that is a minor quibble because things do perk up and turn into some fun.

The convoluted plot and some of the explanations of some of the behavior develop confusion, it is the violence and the Gay behavior of the characters that bring this home with a different feel and is a near winner despite some of its missteps. This is one of Stephen Baldwin's best performances and Mickey Rourke is, well the always interesting Mickey Rourke.

This is the kind of movie which makes you wondering all the time how the madness created by coincidences will end, which is also the strength of the movie; it doesn't get bored. Fall time fits in the new type of genre that is introduced in the 90's: 'nouvelle violence'. The character of these movies are formed by the excessive use of hard violence, mostly in the crime circuit. As you'll probably know, the leading man in this genre is Quentin Tarantino, with movies like reservoir dogs and true romance (movies who look a bit like fall time).

The role of Mickey Rourke is almost made for him, and also Baldwin gives honor to his name.

It surprised me a bit that so few people voted for this movie, hence I would suggest that if you don't mind hard violence and you like a surprising end, go rent this movie, it won't let you down.

Released in January '95, "Fall Time" was the first movie from indie filmmaker, Paul Warner and the result is that he didn't directed another movie since, even if it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival. It failed to win and never got domestic distribution in the States, going DTV in several other countries and disappear from public viewing after a while.

The story penned by Steve Alden & Paul Skemp showed some promises at the beginning, but Warner was unable to hand it well to the screen, offering a pedestrian crime / thriller, not that well photographed, and the evident low budget kind of ruined the visual experience of a period piece (the movie is set in the 50's).

The only thing he did a tad better was the casting decisions with Stephen Baldwin & Mickey Rourke, playing the duo of eccentric bank robbers (full of homossexual overtones between the two that wasn't at all needed); David Lynch's muse, Sheryl Lee in a tiny (& exploitative) role and Jason London, Jonah Blechman & David Arquette playing the three unwary teenagers.

Baldwin offers a good performance as the nervous Leon with a great supporting from Rourke with his baroque gusto for extravagant characters and smooth delivering of his lines that deserved to be better written. By '94 when "Fall Time" went into production, Rourke, blackballed from Hollywood A-list films, was enjoying his new sports career in boxing appearing in just 1 or 2 weeks filmed cameos to pay the bills, and his Florence Nightingale's character here was just an extent of the rogue character he played 2 years before in "White Sands" ('92).

David Arquette can play this reckless 50's greaser character in his sleep, he had already played similar roles in the short lived TV Show, "The Outsiders" ('90) and "Roadracers" ('94). Jason London can't act to save his own life, even Jonah Blechman is better.

In short, "Fall Time" is a way average film, only recommended for fans of the actors involved, besides that is an exercise in dull and a near waste of time (the ending sucks and doesn't made any sense at all).

I still give it a 5, just for some of the actors / performances.

Man, how I regret wasting my precious time on this film. Fall Time is so awful that I kind of feel ashamed to have it in my DVD collection. Not for long though… Don't be fooled by the Sundance nomination (how this piece of junk achieved it is a mystery) and the promising cast: Fall Time is an annoyingly bad film. Its plot is contrived, the developments of the story border on the ridiculous and to top it off the acting is poor. Even those actors who proved elsewhere that they can do much better (Mickey Rourke, Sheryl Lee) fail to impress.

When you feel that it is a movie that you are watching and not a story that you could immerse yourself in, when you see sweating actors instead of characters or cheap sets instead of real locations you know that the illusion you expect to get from a film will not arrive this time. Try as I might I would be hard pressed to find a single redeeming feature in this film. I only gave it 2 stars to reserve 1 for the absolute black holes of cinema. Avoid it like the plague!