Fall Time (1995)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Great Film overall

Good start, but then it gets ruined

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Three life-long pals stage a gag at a bank and run into some criminals planning to rob the bank. The criminal boss is Rourke a creepy psychopath exploiting his gunsel, Baldwin, the piteously warped product of a prison upbringing. The pals have Arquette as their ring leader, who's escaping the rage and numbness his parents model. To Jason London these guys are brothers, his surrogate family. Blechman, the lowly little guy, hero worships Arquette, who in his crazy way is his mentor. (If these guys seem gay to you, get well so maybe you can have a friend someday.) The two gangs get mixed up and separated at the bank, then Rourke makes a bad situation desperate and, for Baldwin, tragic. When Sheryl Lee shows up the power balance goes seismic in the best noir style. Rourke controls with intimidating innuendo that shocks by turning the tables on us and our usual voyeuristic experience of some cliché villain leering while he cuts a bra away. To say you'll be the one who feels discomfort doesn't begin to describe the debasement and violation he exerts with his cold games. (Those who find these any kind of erotic need to get well also.) The acting, direction, and writing go beyond the now familiar story of a botched bank heist to explore how the hunger to be with others spares from danger only the least human.

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 their mere power and appeal—this works well when the whole movie is directed towards this, or works in this special direction,or is meant to achieve such a thing (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).

Fall Time was such an underrated film. I cannot believe that this film got the critical mauling that it did. Everything about it (save, maybe, for Sheryl Lee, who comes across as a bit hammy) is near perfect. The director, Paul Warner should be commended for pulling off a film with a decent Mickey Rourke performance, and, as an actor myself. If i ever get the chance to work with this director, it would be a dream come true. I'm so glad to see that he's got another film in the pipeline. Roll on it's release.

My goodness. I thought for a moment there that these five guys were going to take off their clothes and have a orgy. The Plot Summary in the IMDB database said there were some homosexual overtones in this movie. I really don't think they were overtones. They were out loud thrown in your face, and you just had to smile to yourself. The three younger boys, with their grab ass and pulling down underwear and slow dancing and coming within a half an inch from each other mouths putting on each others ties in their little "Fort", which is what David called it. It seemed more to me that this was their little secret hideaway. Now as far as the two ex-cons, the very cute Steve Baldwin and the ever beautiful Mickey Rourke. These guys just made you feel like you were about to spill your beans. It was so obvious that these two had to be lovers. With all of the "You know I love you" and the hand holding and mouths coming only inches away from each other, and the feeling each others bodies, I was just waiting for them to take off their clothes in the middle of the road and do it on the cement. This is how powerful the "Homosexual Overtones" came off.One thing that really kind of p***ed me off about this movie, is this jerk water town were everything was supposed to take place. These people in this town were just lockjawwed morons. I mean one example was when this guy with a Johnny Suede/Elvis Presley haircut, ran to call the police when he thought something was going to go down at the bank. He runs to the pay phone in this town, I don't remember the exact name, something like Colidine, anyway he calls the operator and ask, "Give me the Colidine Sheriffs Department". I mean duh, this guy lives in Colidine, why in the world did he not just ask for the "Sheriffs Office", or even dialed the number himself. It's not like when he dialed "0" he got the International Operator in Istanbul, I mean come on.All in all with all of the stupid town people, including the Sheriff himself, it had a pretty good story line. Rent it on a weekend, something to smile and think about.