Blood and Wine
First screened in Summer 1998 / Most recently screened and reviewed in September 2024
Director: Bob Rafelson. Cast: Jack Nicholson, Stephen Dorff, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Caine, Judy Davis, Harold Perrineau Jr., Mike Starr, Robyn Peterson. Screenplay: Nick Villiers and Alison Cross (based on an original screen story by Nick Villiers and Bob Rafelson).

VOR:   I still give the film credit for resisting contemporary grains and restaging character-driven noir with requisite nastiness—with barely any guns!



   
Photo © 1996 Fox Searchlight Pictures
Well, that's a bummer! I remember seeing this on cable in the late 90s and thinking this was a wrongly overlooked, tightly plotted neo-noir with Nicholson and Caine turning in more potent character work than was their 90s wont and a barely pre-Selena Jennifer Lopez making a promising impression. I'm not sure I think any of these things now? Nicholson isn't working through layers or giving into frantic, messy impulse nearly as much as the part invites. Caine's at least making more vivid choices, albeit at or past the edge of affectation. Lopez is clearly finding her feet and is not only struggling with a Cuban accent but sounds post-dubbed throughout, as though someone in late stages of production thought she needed to go back and try to sound "more Latin," which is all too eye-rollingly plausible.

Really, none of these actors can be faulted (and nor can Judy Davis, and nor can Stephen Dorff, and nor can Harold Perrineau) when Nicholson's old compatriot Bob Rafelson seems so disengaged in his direction. Give or take a few sour character confrontations and one decent car chase with an indecent result, Rafelson isn't coaxing out or multiplying the textures and resonances available in this script. And I'm sorry to say that, as excited as I was to re-catch this 25 years later with a spiffy Criterion Channel glow-up, I actually think the movie was better-served by the grainy, low-fi quality of my old VHS recording from, I think, a STARZ broadcast. That slightly cruddy grain gave the movie some B-movie visual cred and it roughed up a movie that's meant to be trafficking in roughness. Cleaned up and looking "better" than it probably has since the theater, Blood and Wine sports some of Newton Thomas Sigel's typically workaday lensing and lighting, and the movie plays more as a pedestrian misfire that had the resources to achieve more.

I'm sad to relinquish this movie as a pet underdog, though it remains a consistent asset in the Cinematrix game, and that's not nothing! I'm glad I write this first review, so I can act like a noir character and re-immerse myself in the fantasy or the memory I preferred rather than the colder facts of the case. Grade: C+


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