'Struck' highlights strong AFI opening weekend

By PHILIP WUNTCH
Film Critic Emeritus
The second annual AFI Dallas International Film Festival is off to a triumphant start. At least judging from its opening weekend, it's what a film festival should be -- a rousing and robust celebration of movie going and movie making.

With Angelika Mockingbird Station, Magnolia, Inwood and AMC NorthPark as venues, it offers an abundance of intriguing selections and intelligent Q&A sessions. Well, OK, maybe Mickey Rooney rambled a bit when honored opening night Thursday at the Majestic. But anyone who saw the veteran ham at the latest SAG Awards can't have been overly surprised.

Other honorees, such as Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt and Josh Brolin, were just as friendly and less long-winded. Brolin reportedly made many media friends when "No Country for Old Men" played last year's Cannes Film Festival. And all reports were positive for his Dallas appearance regarding his short film "X."

One of the weekend selections, Stuart Gordon's "Stuck," had strong local interest, being "loosely inspired" by the notorious Chante Mallard case. Mallard, a Fort Worth nurse's aide, hit a homeless man, who remained lodged in her windshield when she refused to give him any aid.

Gordon's customary dark humor lightens the Mallard tragedy, and sensitive locals needn't worry. All names have been changed, plot elements restructured, and the action re-located to Providence, R.I.

Screenwriter John Strysik visited the festival, along with Stephen Rea, who stars as the homeless man "stuck" by Mena Suvari's shockingly selfish predator. Rea, of "The Crying Game" fame, had little to say but seemed like a charming eccentric. Strysik was loquacious.

"[The film] is not just about what happened in Fort Worth," the screenwriter said. "It has several inspirations. It's an Everyman story. It's also a medieval morality play. And one of the movie inspirations was [Alfred] Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" (released in 1944, starring Tallulah Bankhead). Hitchcock created enormous suspense with one claustrophobic setting. Much of "Stuck" takes place in the garage where Mena keeps her car with Stephen stuck in the windshield."

When asked about spending much of the shoot with his bloody body stuck in a windshield, Rea succinctly replied, "It was horrible. Horrible."

Anyone who's seen Gordon's 1985 "Re-Animator" knows how skillfully he can mix squishy mayhem with sticky merriment. A bit involving a nosy dog will generate groans and guffaws. With "Stuck," the director is in top form, and so are his main players. Suvari, the teen vixen of "American Beauty," never tries to soften her basically despicable character, while Rea brings wounded dignity to his scenes as a homeless city dweller and as Suvari's victim.

Another strong entree was Lee Kazimir's documentary "More Shoes," which he directed, produced, photographed, wrote and edited.

Stuck in a dead-end job, Kazimir yearned to be a filmmaker and was inspired by legendary director Werner Herzog's advice to skip film school and embark on a 1,500-kilometer trek on foot. So Kazimir set out from Madrid to Kiev, accompanied only by his camera, his curiosity about human nature and an occasional change of footwear.

"I didn't bring along any books," he said. "I didn't want anything to take me out of it. I just wanted it to be me and the road."

Along the way he meets a troupe of traveling Christian evangelists, a group of neo-Nazis who espouse Aryan supremacy as well as lovable oddballs of all ages and nationalities. Yet after the experience was over, he felt a strong sense of depression.

"It all gave me a sense of the world, which is really hard," he said.

The hardest part of the actual film making was editing 100 hours of footage to 75 minutes.

"Editing it was much harder than walking on foot for six months. But the result of it all is, I think, a film of memories. It's not cut like a chronological story. It's cut like a group of memories."

And those memories are earthy, ribald and poignant.

The AFI Dallas Film Festival continues through Sunday. For more information, log on to afidallas.com or call 214-720-0555.

GOOD "JOB": If you're in the mood for non-festival film going, check out "The Bank Job" before it's too late. It's a jolly good heist film that opened three weeks ago to modest business. Strong-of-mouth has allowed it to gain momentum. But in today's movie biz, opening weekend is what it's all about.

The movie is inspired by a famous 1971 bank robbery which resulted in no arrests and no refunds. Incriminating bank vault deposits reached up to the upper tiers of royal Brits.

"The Bank Job" is witty, violent, twisty and suspenseful, with splendid performances by Jason Statham, as a relatively decent bank robber, and the seductively androgynous Saffron Burrows.

It's also Australian director Roger Donaldson's best film since his 1981 breakthrough "Smash Palace." Considering the director's spotty resume over the last 27 years, that's scant praise indeed. But trust me. This "Bank Job" is a winner.