Big Bad Love

During the entire decade of the 1980's and toward the early 1990's,Debra Winger was one of the hottest actresses working in Hollywood at the time and she had a beau of leading actors that took her to the title of the box office queen. Some of her leading men were John Travolta,Richard Gere,Marlon Brando,and Jack Nicholson as well as with actors Robert Duvall and Ed Harris. However,she would win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1983 for "Terms of Endearment",and after that she went in submission for a while.......only to resurface.

However,Debra Winger makes her return here in one of the best performances of her career. "Big Bad Love" is a film based on the writings of Mississippi author Larry Brown. She people think that she retired from the cimema in recent years(her last film was nine years ago under the direction of Bernardo Bertlucci),but takes this chance to star opposite her real-life husband Arliss Howard(who stars,directs,and wrote the script). Howard plays,Leon Barlow,a depressive,alcoholic Vietnam veteran and aspiring writer. Aside from holding a candle for hs ex-wife(Winger),most of Barlow's time focuses on daily trips to the mailbox,sending off plies of manuscripts,and following enough rejection letters to wallpaper hs bathroom. He is played as a sympathetic ne'er-do -well,lovable enough to be excused for shirking his familial responsiblities as a father(including his two precious children),until the end of the film,when tragedy strikes and Barlow is forced out of his cynical melancholy.

Strong performances from Angie Dickinson as well(in a grand return to the silver screen)as Rosanna Arquette(whom I haven't heard from since the 1990's)and Paul Le Mat. This movie had the heart,the guts and the soul that makes it a piece of grand cimematic work. A must see!

Rating: **** out of *****

This essentially comic movie tells a suitably disjointed story of the crazed writing life in the South. All the players -- Arliss Howard, Debra Winger, the underrated Paul Le Mat, Rosanna Arquette, and Angie Dickinson -- are excellent. Instead of spoonfeeding us, the movie lets us discover the characters' past lives and motivations. It contains grand images: someone's novel scattered in a giant patch of kudzu; a painting in progress on the side of a rusted railroad car. Some people will like it just for the music, including by Tom Waits.

Marks the return of Debra Winger to our video stores if not the big screen. For those who wondered, she is still a wonderful actress and is surrounded by a fine cast here. But this is basically the pretty boring story of an unpublished writer whose skills fail to equal his vocabulary which reeks of the platitudes and 'truisms' he decries.

Arliss Howard plays the writer, Barlow, and his drinking bouts with his Vietnam War buddy, Monroe, Paul LeMat, are well handled and sufficiently depressing to attract 'artsie' viewers. The subsequent tragic events in the actual plot are universal enough to hold our attention while we hope that something major will be said. But alas, nothing is and we are left with nothing but a empty story with good acting.

It is a shame that these notably good artists haven't found anything better to do. Special kudos though to Angie Dickinson who plays a role that no one had ever envisioned for her and does quite nicely.

Arliss Howard acts and directs in "Big Bad Love" which he co-produced with his wife, Debra Winger. Ms. Winger returns to the screen as the former spouse of Howard. She delivers a performance that made me regret her hiatus away from the set. From a starting point as a more or less typical divorced mother with kids she develops her character into a wrenching portrait of both strength and vulnerability.

In a series of illusions, hallucinations and surreal flashbacks, wounded Vietnam vet Leon (Howard) devotes his life to three endeavors: fiction writing, drinking and attempting, through the fog of alcohol, to be a dad to his little boy and girl. His rejection notices are so many that even after wallpapering a room with them he needs a fifty-five gallon oil drum next to his desk to hold the rest. Voiceovers read the letters which contain just about every cliche from the canon of editorial rejection imaginable.

Leon seems to be welded to beer cans - except when he hits the hooch for a change. I don't think anyone writes coherently when he's three sheets to the wind but this guy can.

As a dad he is both devoted and distracted, the often exasperating but permanent part of many a divorced mom's life.

The setting is a rural part of Mississippi that some reviewers have described as beautiful but which I found desolate and depressing (but that's my Gotham viewpoint, no insult intended to the locals portrayed in this film).

Arliss's character, Leon, has a strong friendship with Monroe, a buddy from combat. Unfortunately the lubricant for their relationship inevitably leads to big time trouble. Without excess sentimentality, the two friends navigate a small world that presents minor pleasures and real disappointments. The friendship is deep and real but with a touch of middle-aged regression to adolescence.

The acting here is as strong as the Mississippi drawl. There is little predicability beyond the reality that NOTHING will stop Arliss from writing and sending his many, many manuscripts off to faceless editors, apparently all or mostly in New York.

This film needs a strong word-of-mouth boost to get the audiences it deserves and it'll probably mostly be seen on VHS and DVD. Howard's and Winger's strong and affecting acting offer, I hope, promises for a renewed future for both in film.

Big Bad Love achieves what few films even strive for -- that gritty level of believability (laced with wonderful dream sequences throughout) that makes it seem as though the camera was simply dropped into the center of these characters' lives.

There are a number of wonderful lines, and few scenes funnier than when unsuccessful writer, Leon Barlow (played by Howard), sits down to type a response to a letter from a magazine editor, rejecting one of his short stories.

Not to say that the film isn't uneven at times. Howard (who not only stars in the film, but also directs), remains true to his narrative, which does become difficult to watch as Barlow becomes more self-destructive. The dream sequences become muddled after a while, but only because that's how Barlow is experiencing them.

Performances by Paul Le Mat, Debra Winger, Angie Dickinson, and Rosanna Arquette are all very strong. The soundtrack is top-notch.

I highly recommend this film, particularly as an anti-dote to the vapid doggerel Hollywood continues to churn out like link sausages.