Slightly better than average action drama from Rourkes comeback phase
This better than average, this rather good and interesting ’94 action drama has a good subject—the story, though, was not well written, it’s underdeveloped, and the scenes are badly managed. But the movie is not necessarily bad or stupid, and it’s not the worst thing that Rourke made in the ‘90s. It belongs to the second segment of his ‘90s output (’94—’96, i.e. before the truly awful part—the Double Team (1997)\ Love in Paris (1997) segment).[In my vision, Rourke’s parts during the ‘90s can be divided chronologically into four groups, or tendencies.]
Rourke’s part in Fall Time is basically the same character he has in Shergar (1999), Out in Fifty (1999), Get Carter (2000), Picture Claire (2001) (but this category could include also his more upper—class and pseudo—sophisticated villains, like those from earlier films like Desperate Hours (1990), White Sands (1992) and Last Outlaw and Double Team ). His character in “FT” is a pretentious thug, and Rourke plays it with his baroque gusto for twisted compositions. Unfortunately the script is quite poor and his role almost small.
Rourke makes here an extravagant apparition, that comes from Brando’s extravagant entrances in the ‘60s (this extravagant aspect was well commented, in Brando’s case, by Hopkins). Rourke and Brando have both the taste of these striking extravagant entrances.
Such apparitions are meant to delight by themselves, by there mere power and appeal—this works well when the whole movie is directed towards this, or works in this special direction (as in Desperate Hours (1990) or Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991) or maybe even in The Last Outlaw ,1994) ;but when the movie sets itself up for an entirely different thing, they seem not to belong to that movie—they seem heterogeneous and useless and not in keep with the meaning of the film.
We might note here that intensity and extravagance of this sort are different things. For a good etalon ,see Hopper who makes intense but not strikingly extravagant roles.
Rourke’s apparitions like the one in the movie we are discussing might interest me, who am a Rourke fan and interested in seeing a Rourke role, a Rourke specimen ;and for me, it’s meaningful; but they will not interest, or will fail to interest people who just want the movie for itself, who just want this particular movies on its own terms. Like Brando, Rourke tends to subordinate the movie to his own role; sometimes, if the role is suited and well written, this will work; sometimes, it won’t.
Fall Time is better than Double Team (1997), Love in Paris (1997), Point Blank (1997), Shergar (1999), Out in Fifty (1999),and maybe even than White Sands (1992) (where, anyway, Rourke’s own role was junk).