Bovie Movie

Absolutely ludicrous from its hokey start to senseless finish, the only shock in this ersatz haunted house thriller is that Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) considered it worth directing. When city slickers Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone move to a dilapidated country mansion, they face redneck prejudice and sinister threats from former owner and ex-con Stephen Dorff, who wants to keep a dark family secret buried there. With every plot twist telegraphed well in advance, the best thing to do is sit back and stoically tick off each plodding spooky cliché as it appears. Complete with Dorff emanating badness from scene one and his trailer-trash girlfriend (Juliette Lewis) and her inscrutable sheriff sister (Dana Eskelson) refusing to believe the patently obvious, nothing makes sense in this technically proficient but bogus horror. More hilarious than creepy — Dorff infesting the house with poisonous snakes is embarrassingly overacted — think cold, creaky mannerisms instead. 

Changing the past to alter the present is the intriguing premise of this diverting thriller. Via an ancient ham radio set, Jim Caviezel is able to speak to his beloved fireman dad, Dennis Quaid, across 30 years of time, on the day before Quaid is due to die in a warehouse blaze. Forewarned by Caviezel, Quaid escapes his fate, but his survival changes history: suddenly, Caviezel’s mum (Elizabeth Mitchell) no longer exists! Combining a relationship yarn with a race-against-time bid to hunt down a killer, it plays like a big-budget episode of The Twilight Zone. Paradoxes appear as the film gets increasingly complex, but our interest is maintained by fine performances from Quaid and Caviezel, and by sharp direction from Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear), whose only serious misjudgement is an unforgivably slushy finale. 

Oliver Stone offers his multi-camera perspective on American football in this bruising “us and them” drama. Essentially it’s North Dallas Forty with a racial subtext, coated in Jerry Maguire feel-good sentimentality. But this ensemble masterclass is also a hybrid of Platoon and Wall Street, with Al Pacino even delivering a teamwork variation on Michael Douglas’s “Greed Is Good” speech. It’s no accident that the tin-helmeted players thunder into encounters resembling the beach sequence in Saving Private Ryan, for Stone considers them the cannon fodder in a militaristic stratagem, to be patched up and returned to the front by generals stationed safely away from the conflict. It’s overlong, but has moments of explosive inspiration. 

Thanks to the efforts of John Wayne and the legend of Davy Crockett, many are familiar with the bare facts of the Alamo — how, in 1836, a handful of Texans mounted a suicidal defence of a former mission against the Mexican army. It’s a crucial episode in US history and part of the national psyche, but it would be hard to divine exactly why from this lengthy account. Heavy on character and light on exposition, this reduces events to a mass of buckskin fringes and big knives. The big-name cast is a draw, with Dennis Quaid effective as the oft-sozzled General Sam Houston (who would go on to avenge the Alamo, defeating the Mexican commander Santa Anna and securing the independence of Texas) and Billy Bob Thornton charming as backwoods hero Crockett. Without the political and historical context, however, this is simply a story of apparently misguided courage in the face of adversity. 

This attempt to update Fantastic Voyage doesn’t measure up to director Joe Dante’s best work, but it’s still a notch above the usual Hollywood fodder. Dennis Quaid plays the hot-shot military man who is miniaturised and mistakenly pumped into the body of lowly supermarket clerk Martin Short. The effects are excellent and Dante’s sly humour shines through occasionally, but it lacks the anarchy the director is noted for and Short’s hysterics eventually begin to grate. Meg Ryan pops up as the love interest and there are good supporting turns from Kevin McCarthy and Henry Gibson. Dante regular Dick Miller, once a fixture in Roger Corman’s movies, has a cameo as a cab driver. 

This remake from Behind Enemy Lines director John Moore adds little to Robert Aldrich’s 1965 original, save some superior special effects, but it’s a decent enough adventure yarn for those who haven’t seen the first film. The plot remains much the same: the survivors of a plane crash in the desert (here the Gobi; it was the Sahara in the original) seek to escape by building a second craft from the wreckage of the first. Dennis Quaid assumes the role of the pilot originally played by James Stewart, while Giovanni Ribisi steps into Hardy Kruger’s shoes to play the aircraft designer who conceives the idea of a new plane to rise phoenix-like from the ashes of the old. The production values are good — the opening crash is especially well staged — and the tension builds nicely. Overall, it’s a decent retread, though perhaps not a particularly necessary one.