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movie review - Suicide Kings

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 1999.03.21

Entertaining but a little disappointing. Aging gangsters and loser rich-kid dimwits. It can only go so far. The plot is about two kidnappings. The first is of the twentyish daughter of a wealthy figure (who never appears in the film). The second is of a reformed gangster, an associate of the father with connections to people who can fix the first kidnapping.

After a few shootings, a severed finger, some recreational substance use and some paranoiac thinking, things are about as tightly wound as they can get.

The attempted humour is largely based on the typical dum-dum characterization of the gangsters, which doesn't fit terribly well with the tension among the overly serious scenario with Walken and his captors.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

—John Steinbeck, Cannery Row