Detour (1998)

Wonderful Movie

good back-story, and good acting

Fresh and Exciting

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

I thought this was just going to be a macho movie full of shooting, explosions, cursing and loud music. But when Danny returned to his hometown for what waitress Inga said was the first time in 10 years, the movie went in a whole new direction (temporarily). The music became more mellow though not necessarily my taste. The pace of the movie became more comfortable and I found myself starting to enjoy it.After a big robbery in New York City, with the usual action,it is not clear just who has the money. Mo tells Ziggy on the phone that Danny must have it, though Mo is the one having sex on a big pile of cash. Ziggy comes to Danny's town, and he is soon followed by the boys that Grasso sent. Eventually, Grasso has to come himself, in a great big limo.Danny, meanwhile, has to deal with the death of his mother (although he didn't get the message, his return came, coincidentally, just in time for the funeral). He is left to run the family farm and the family's dairy business (he doesn't want to do either). His former girlfriend Britt has married Danny's stepbrother Burl, who is the bumbling sheriff.There is quite a bit of comedy in the second half. Ziggy and his friend are staying with Danny, but they must wake up bright and early after Mel, whose only way of making a living is running Danny's farm, is promised that Ziggy will help out. Burl also must deal with an emergency after he has decided to turn off his police radio, so the dispatcher uses a bullhorn (not realizing Burl is standing right in front of him). Mo was also funny with his date. And Grasso and his boys seem to have little conscience when they kill people. A lot of the comedy is associated with the emergency Burl had to respond to.I liked the scenes with Danny and Britt the best, as well as scenes where Danny spent time with his niece Daniella. There was also a parade near the end where Inga and Daniella were beauty queens, and that was fun too (in this type of movie, though, do you think a parade will go smoothly?). And while I didn't like most of the music, I think the music will be a highlight for a lot of people.

A bunch of cool gangsters are robbing a suitcase full of money from an Italian mafia bosses' headquarter and leaving for the country side for another big coup, but the Italian mob is already hunting them for bloody revenge... that's the whole plot of this hardcore action b-movie flick by Joey Travolta, the little brother of big John.Travolta wants to direct like his big idols - Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Martin Scorsese, Brian de Palma, Walter Hill, Sam Peckinpah, John Woo and the Die Hard movies... but Travolta is none of the above but only a b-movie director which you can see in every single second of this film! The story is to flat and often-told, the dialogues are bland and not witty at all, and the actors seem partially comatose... nobody here really seemed to be too enthusiastic about his job.Although Joey Travolta collected a lot of second-league stars of hard-boiled undergound and action movie fame around like Jeff Fahey, Michael Madsen, James Russo and Gary Busey, even those rather good actors can't add any quality to this trash. Even the shootings and showdowns are rather boring, and too many slow motions rather serve to say good night to the viewer instead of taking his breath away. This film is alright for two hours of mindless action fun after midnight, but I recommend to choose the originals instead!

But are they really bad to the bone? Jeff Fahey, James Russo and Darnell Williams play a gang of thieving thugs in black leather jackets and old blue jeans. Gary Busey is the accomplice with a thing for silk pyjamas. The real badguys are mobsters in suits. Michael Madsen, disappointingly, only gets to play the alcoholic cop who looks like Elvis in decline. Throw in a mob of good-hearted farmers, and there's your cast.I thought I'd worked out the ending half way through, but I was wrong.

When Danny and his gang attempt to rob the warehouse of a mob boss, they find themselves on the run. Danny goes back to his hometown to find his mother has recently died leaving him the farm on the condition that he must open the dairy and run it for two years. However the gang is double crossed by Mo and the mob begin to hunt them down, meanwhile Danny and his gang consider robbing the mill in his town.This is a very low rent film! It's a thriller that is very slow and dull, with no tension or action to write home about. The story is mostly about Danny going home and learning to be a nice guy again and starting to farm - the plot about the mob and the temptation of the "one-last-job" is almost a sideplot. That makes it feel so boring and slow. The action itself is uninspired - a house blows up, big deal.The characters are stereotypes - the mob guys are a joke - and the performances match the material. I like Jeff Fahey, however this type of stuff is part of the reason he never gets big roles, he is poor in a poor film. And what is it with Gary Busey in Fahey films? In Lethal Tender he appeared to be in a different film and the same is true here. His character Mo only has a few scenes and all of them in his flat - to Busey this must have represented an easy week on set at most. Michael Madsen shows why he hasn't build on his cult success in Reservoir Dogs in a very, very lazy role.Overall a very dull film that is bookended by action to try and make it interesting. This is bad even by Jeff Fahey's dubious standards.