The Fan (1996)

That was an excellent one.

Really Surprised!

A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Take a great actor like De Niro and a cool premise. Mix into a decent trailer to attract the movie crowd. I sit there in the theater thinking 'Where did you spend that money making this garbage. I don't see it." It's almost like the money was spent on something other than making the movie. I remember this movie as being exceptionally bad to the point where I remembered the name off the top of my head after 20 years. It's really one of those 'Throw away' films. You make it...make money...throw it away. This and 'Snake Eyes' are two of the reasons why I stopped going to movies back in the day. It was just the year before when De Niro was in the excellent 'Casino'. If you observe both performances side by side, you can see how lacking this one was.Eventually Hollywood wised up. If you sell garbage by putting your name on it, then your name becomes devalued and you put your whole career in jeopardy. If you screw over the consumer, they won't buy your product.

Any other actor might have kept us guessing about where the plot was heading... but we were straight out lucky to have the greatest actor on the planet (that's Robert De Niro) playing the role of Gil Renard, a baseball freak fixated on centre fielder Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes), who has traded up from Milwaukee to the San Francisco Giants with a wow $40 million contract. For De Niro, maybe, it was just another film role, just another character and yet another, brilliant performance, which would go unnoticed... The term "method acting" is synonymous with Robert De Niro. With De Niro, there's no mystery. He flashes that sicko grin from his seat in Candlestick Park, and we duck. He learns he's about to lose his job selling knives (!), and we know it won't be long until the stabbing starts. That's the problem. You sit down to watch The Fan and wonder how De Niro is going to come up with something new after firing on presidential candidate Leonard Harris in Taxi Driver, kidnapping TV star Jerry Lewis in The King of Comedy, torturing lawyer Nick Nolte in Cape Fear and abusing stepson Leonardo DiCaprio in This Boy's Life, to name just a few of the victims De Niro has memorably stalked.Up till this point, "The Fan" is badly rated because of Tony Scott's miss-direction, not crappy performances by the cast or anything like a bad plot line. It shows signs of finding fresh life in a stale formula even Jim Carrey couldn't sell with The Cable Guy. De Niro is so persuasive and moving that you wish the film would let him develop the character and dodge the slasher stuff. It's not to be. The Fan rides with De Niro, (and no one else, okay maybe the kids were fine as well) substituting crass exploitation for insight.Perhaps the late great director's brother, Ridley Scott could find gravity in this story; Tony Scott goes for the gore and the box- office gold. He strands his MVP, who is too skilled an actor to let himself get typed. De Niro will never be a typecast. A nut. One more flick like The Fan and he may discover he's created his own Frankenstein monster. De Niro is someone we knew from the moment we saw him for the first time on screen: How god damn good he really was...and still is... and can be. The film roles doesn't matter, seriously. What Bill Clinton Is To fries and a Big Mac, Robert De Niro is to psychos and mobsters. He can't get enough of them. De Niro eats those suckers for breakfast. Maybe he should change his diet after The Fan, (which he did actually). Because sometime you just need to skip your breakfast, you know, just to get your appetite ready for a bigger meal, for lunch. A pumped-up, pin-headed thriller from slick-trick director, the late Tony Scott, this could've been a great film. And "I'm as serious as a F**king heart attack!"

Sometimes baseball can be more important than life itself.Starring Robert De Niro and Wesley Snipes.Written by Peter Abrahams ( Book ) and Phoef Sutton ( Screenplay).Directed by Tony Scott.Sometimes a very average movie can be carried by one great acting performance.It's never been truer said than in this one. Everything else about The Fan is distinctly average. The plot has been done to death. Obsessed fan becomes a dangerous fan. Obsessed fan has newspaper clippings pinned to his walls. Obsessed fan resorts to murder.Most of the acting performances are average as well, including Wesley Snipes in what I'm guessing is one of his early acting roles. Or maybe it's more of a case of actors being miscast?I didn't buy the plot. For the first half of the film the main character is just a terrible husband that seems destined to screw up his relationship with his ex and his son. And then suddenly the movie jumps the shark and he turns into an obsessed fan with a pair of binoculars and a taste for murder. The whole production is a bit of a damp squid but Robert De Niro delivers a good performance that manages to stop the film from hurtling over the edge of a cliff.An average 6/10 but mainly because of Robert De Niro.

Gil Renard (Robert De Niro) is a failing knife salesman, a SF Giants fanatic, a divorced father of a boy, and a very angry guy. Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes) is a new sign to the ball club, and the hope for savior. Both men's lives go downhill.Director Tony Scott has made a movie filled with flash and sizzle. It doesn't accentuate as much as distract. When there is a master thespian like Robert De Niro, all the extra fireworks just take the focus away from the real show. And Wesley Snipes isn't likable enough. A less stereotypical selfish black athlete may help. His scenes with his agent Manny (John Leguizamo) are annoying and tiresome. This could have been a creepy character study like the iconic 'Taxi Driver'. But it never allows De Niro any peace and quiet to do his work properly.