No Looking Back (1998)

Purely Joyful Movie!

A different way of telling a story

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's always refreshing to see movies that deal with ordinary people and their lives. Burns has made it his "thing" to create normal, fragile characters who live very ordinary lives and, in this film at least, are sad and disappointed over how mundane and uneventful their existence is. Burns taps into this genre quite well but here, unlike his excellent debut The Brothers McMullen, his characters aren't as interesting or well defined.Lauren Holly plays a waitress who seems to be bored out of her mind, living with blue collar mechanic Bon Jovi. Her old sweetheart (who completely broke her heart) Burns returns and promises her a better life if she will pack up and go with him.Holly gives an excellent performance in the lead role. She's the best written character as well, and you feel for her and root for her. Other characters aren't as well defined and are fairly one-dimensional and uninteresting, especially Burn's character. The film moves along very slowly and, aside from one scene involving Bon Jovi, avoids any real emotional outbursts. It's very subdued and could have used some form of life injected to it.Cast is mostly excellent. Holly is terrific, Burns good as usual but most unexpected; Bon Jovi is actually quite effective as Holly's unfortunate boyfriend.Praise goes also to the excellent music score. There's not one but three Springsteen songs and in my books that indicates some good musical taste.

I was surprised at Jon Bon Jovi performance in this movie, apparently (and this is mean) he plays second roles better than leading parts. I liked him much better in the little appearances he has on this movie, specially the breakup scene, than for e.g., all of his performance in Vampires (altough the movie was OK for a Sunday afternoon, you won't remember it afterwards). A friend of mine even said "Michael" didn't seem like a romantic man (!?). The best thing in the entire movie is of course the girl. I liked the way she could play out the inner doubts the character was going through. The nerdo she was supposed to run away with was very good at being annoying.

Ive seen quite a few Jon Bon Jovi films (except for ROW YOUR BOAT!!) and this one rocks them all!! Hes so believable and the last scene between him and Robin, he was so believable, I just wanted to hold him.Great stor line. I guess we all go through an identity crisis of what we really want and this film is a pure example that we all have right to dreams (although I dont think we should betray our loved ones like Robin did!!)Definetly worth a watch!!4/5

"No Looking Back" spends almost all of it's 1.5 hour run time with a guy (Burns) trying to reclaim his girlfriend (Holly) after years away from the small town where they grew up together. Typical of Burns flicks this film is all conversation amongst working class people. The problem with the story is there is never any mention of a reason why she should want to go anywhere with him. No plan to ensure their mutual success and happiness save a brief mention of Texas. He has no goals. She has no goals. Her roomie/boyfriend (Bon Jovi) has no plans save the status quo. Apparently none of them care about goals and live as slaves of kismet or karma or something. There's no talk of anything such as..."Hey, what're you gonna do for a living?". Bottom line is this "dog" is shallow, simple minded drivel with some good actors caught up in a story/script which goes no where and has the ending to prove it.