Till the End of the Night (1995)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Writer director Larry Brand wisely cast John Enos as the ex-husband back to claim his wife in this otherwise pedestrian thriller, and made him intelligent and eloquent as well as gorgeous. Enos is clearly the strongest angle in this triangle where the other two Scott Valentine and Katherine Kelly Lang seem hardly worth the bother. It's hard to accept Valentine as an adult particularly when faced with the much larger Enos, and Lang is given a speech about her marriage with Enos filmed from an odd low angle, perhaps so that we don't notice the way she performs it indifferently. The title refers to Enos' last words to her before he was taken away the first time around, and also pre-empts the ordeal the new couple will have to endure. With reference to Enos' prison time, the screenplay features a long homoerotic conversation between Enos and Valentine about how both of them have made love to the same women, as well mention of "fresh meat being opened up " in prison, the under-rated bonds of friendship between Enos and David Keith in a small supporting appearance, and Enos' saying it's "Girls Night Out" when Keith visits unexpectedly. Brand lets Enos deliver the best lines apart from giving him an interest in listening to female talk back radio but no payoff, including to a grocery store clerk being held "Never offer a man what's already his", and in response to Lang's "I'm not the same person" he replies "That's funny. You look like the same person". Although Brand repeats the use of "being thrown a curve ball", he gives Keith a laugh line to Valentine in "When did you grow a second ball", and amusingly mugs for Enos' video camera. There is also the inexplicable idea of potential home buyers being discouraged by Enos' antagonistic appearance at the Valentine/Lang home. Initially Brand's editing is pleasingly swift, never lingering on details, but the climax in the desert is a non-event, with the outcome reading as an easy solution.