Tail Lights Fade (1999)

Absolutely Fantastic

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

It would normally be scary to approach the director to sign your movie and them say, "You actually own it?" But suffice to say, yes I do... and more so I am proud to own it. I hate Breckin Meyer with a passion. He's not that great of an actor when he's a lead (look at Road Trip and Rat Race for examples) so when I sawhe was the lead in this movie I was scared. But I bought it anyway. And to tell you the truth its hilarious! It's written/directed by "Drawing Flies"' Malcolm Ingram. Matt Gissing co-wrote it. I liked "Drawing Flies" alot but not as much as I enjoy Tail Lights Fade. Tail Lights Fade had the dialogue of a Kevin Smithmovie (go figure, Malcolm is good friends with Kevin himself) but had its own original twist on it. The story at teams seemed kind of weak but that didn't stop it by being so damn entertaining. I reccomend this movie to anyone who enjoysfun road trip type movies. Breckin is the lead but he ain't so bad in this one. That really suprised me. I will own the next Malcolm Ingram movie, you can bet onthat!

I hate movies where they try to splice in semi-whitty dialog to compensate for a bad plot. And what a waste of Jake Busey! By the end of the movie there was no clear protagonist anymore and I guess I wanted Breckin to just kill all three of them or something and then go on with his life. So what happens? They melt the place down and he drives off into the darkness leaving his three formers accomplices by the side of the road... oh how metaphoric. I'm not looking for Oscar caliber in this movie, I'm not even looking for something any better than the degenerate Freeway. But man oh man, I hated the blonde chick's character. Kudos to Tanya for making me hate her character so badly... If it's on HBO and you can't sleep cause you had coffee too late, watch this out of the corner of your eye while eating something and catching up on the news in the world. Otherwise don't bother.

This film is pointless. A character driven road movie with the four leads traveling in classic cars across the country to locate, and hide one of the characters brothers Marijuana grow house, before the cops do. You wait for an eternity for it to get going but it just bumbles along until you are just waiting for it to finish so you can go and wash your hair or something. On top of the four poor leads, including Denise Richards (The World is not enough) and her `Starship Troopers' co star Jake Busey (Son of Gary), the production oozes cheap, right down to the quality of the picture on your screen. All in all a complete nothing of a film.

As much as I adore Tanya Allen who is the pillar of this film, she cannot save this film which suffers from low budget, bad camera work, low quality film stock. I have no idea how Brecken Meyer in comparison to his work in Go! could even be persuaded to join this ensemble. And Tail Lights Fade shows Denise Richards for the unBond girl she is.