Blood and Wine (1997)

You won't be disappointed!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The story involves the theft of a multi-million-dollar necklace by thieves Jack Nicholson, who runs a wine shop in Miami, and Michael Caine, a safe cracker on parole. Nicholson packs his suitcase intending to leave his wife, Judy Davis, and his stepson, Steven Dorff, and run off to New York with his innocent girl friend, Jennifer Lopez. In New York, he intends to sell the hot ice to a fence and return to split the cash with Caine.At the last moment, Nicholson has an argument with his wife, she clobbers him with a poker, frantically throws some clothes into Nicholson's suitcase, and drives off with her son. The necklace is stashed in a compartment of the suitcase, although neither she nor Dorff knows it.They find out soon enough. Nicholson and Caine track them to Key Largo and there are arguments, fights, a car chase, until Davis and Caine wind up dead, Dorff takes off in his new boat for the horizon, Lopez drives off alone with one of the stones, and Nicholson winds up in the hands of the law.It has a lot going for it. Nicholson and Caine rarely go wrong. Judy Davis does hysteria well. Jennifer Lopez is a natural actress, a beautiful young woman with a cantilevered rear end. The locations include some of the more colorful parts of Florida. And there's one effective action scene during, and immediately after, the car chase.So why doesn't it work any better than it does? It's a mean-spirited movie. Every character seems greedy, spiteful, and deceitful. There's nobody to root for. It's easy to argue that this is rather more like real life than having good and evil splashed across the screen, but the values don't go much beyond that. No one has any particularly generous impulses. If someone dies, they simply disappear from the story. The only scene in which a genuine conflict of motives appears is when Nicholson is rooting around the bloodied body of his dying wife in an overturned car, searching desperately for the stupid necklace and sobbing with remorse at the same time. And even this is undercut by pettiness. Her last words to Nicholson: "**** you." The ill-considered roles cripple the performances too. Nobody is poor, but no one has a chance to do much more than try to outwit the others. It's also disturbing to see actors we like, like Caine and Nicholson, in parts so petty. They're fine when they are outrageously malignant and venomous. (Nicholson ululating hoarsely and limping through the snow with an ax in his hands.) But realistically, as reprobate as the rest of us? Nope.I also can't understand why the location shooting doesn't take advantage of Miami and the Keys, where it was clearly shot. We see mostly interiors and back yards. Even a fishing boat in the Gulf of Florida feels claustrophobic. There's no sense of space or even of the city. And the photography doesn't help, somehow nudging a viewer into the perception that southern Florida is chilly rather than shimmering in humidity and heat. Where's the sweat? John Huston's "Key Largo" was all shot on a Warner Brothers' sound stage and does a better job of establishing the atmosphere. Finally, the MacGuffin -- that million-dollar necklace -- bespeaking a lack of imagination. Sounds like a job for Charlie Chan.Well, I don't mean to be too harsh. It's not badly done. It's just that so many opportunities for it to have been better were missed in the script and in the direction. Disappointing.

You would think the tandem of the glorious Michael Caine, the always stunning Jack Nicholson and the adorable Judy Davis would set a movie's heels on fire but "Blood and Wine" falls far from expectations as the sparks never start on set. All these esteemed actors give a good showing in their own right but their characters are flat and lifeless. The script seems compelled only to move the action along and nothing else. Mr. Caine, Mr. Nicholson and Ms. Davis give punctuation and try their best to put a breath of life into this lifeless film with an all too obvious plot. Stephen Dorff gives a better performance than usual (no cheers for Blade or Cecil B. Demented) but his character is far from complex, and Jennifer Lopez can't keep her faux Cuban accent up throughout the course of the film.The plot is rather generic and the suspense that the movie is trying to portray is better invoked by the musical score than the cinematic or script climax.As a saving grace the location scouting is great, really espousing the feeling of the Floridian backdrop. But that doesn't save the movie. There are as well a couple of slightly memorable stunt scenes but is not an action film.Skip this one and watch Chinatown again. And if you haven't seen that see it twice.

In Miami, Alex Gates (Jack Nicholson) is a small trader of wines, married with Suzanne (Judy Davies). He does not have a good relationship with his wife and his stepson, Jason (Stephen Dorff). Alex has a Cuban mistress, Gabriela (Jennifer Lopez). One day, he decides to steal a jewel from a rich client, in the house where Gabriela works as a nanny. Alex associates to the tuberculous small-time crook Victor Spansky (Michael Caine). A series of mistakes jeopardize the heist and the selling of the necklace. This amoral and noir movie has a magnificent cast. However, something does not work well, being just an average movie about greed. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Sangue e Vinho" ("Blood and Wine")

BLOOD & WINE (1996) *** Jack Nicholson, Michael Caine, Stephen Dorff, Jennifer Lopez, Judy Davis, Harold Perrineau. Fine devious neo noir and serpentine twists along the way with slick wine salesman Nicholson partnering with chronic, oily Caine (gleefully enjoying his scumbag role) for a get rich quick diamond necklace heist that only gets botched (natch) when his stepson Dorff starts to add up the heinous acts they've committed. Nicholson's attack on Caine is scarily funny. Directed by long-time Jack Packer, Bob Rafelson.