U-TURN

Oliver Stone’s latest cinematic opus, U-TURN, has been touted as a welcome departure from his recent spate of paranoid conspiracy-theory films. Some critics have praised this most recent “contribution” for its “originality” and “audacity,” but, in reality, U-TURN is a sickening, psychotic nightmare that echoes Stone’s NATURAL BORN KILLERS, a movie that drove some susceptible youth to go on bloody killing sprees.

Bobby Cooper is an aimless drifter, played by Sean Penn, whose car breaks down while driving through the Arizona desert. He is forced to stop in Superior, Arizona to seek assistance from Darrell, a loony roadside mechanic portrayed by Billy Bob Thornton. While he waits for his car repairs, he wanders into Superior, a tiny town populated by half-baked eccentrics with psychotic tendencies. Here he meets Grace (Jennifer Lopez), who picks him up and takes him home with her, where he next encounters her deranged husband, Jake McKenna (Nick Nolte).

From there, the story (if it can be called that) spins steadily out of control. Cooper meets progressively stranger townspeople and becomes increasingly and inexorably entangled in their twisted lives.

U-TURN opens with a series of surreal, frenzied camera shots of various images ranging from the innocuous, close-ups of Cooper’s 64 Mustang, to the stomach-turning, exaggerated, gory scene of vultures gobbling road kill. The shocking imagery and hyper-kinetic pace continue relentlessly throughout the film, and scene after violent, bloody scene assaults the eye while intense, disturbing sound effects pound the ear. The violence, obscenity and sheer repugnance of this film cannot be detailed here, as the description would fill several pages.

Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix, who portray teenage rednecks with a penchant for melodrama, are the only bright spots in the film. Their hilarious characters provide a brief respite from vicious brutality and terrifying chaos.

U-TURN’s only real offering is shock value, but, to its credit, the movie does succeed as a postmodern work. The surreal cinematography, incongruous soundtrack, grating sound effects, and even the lack of plot powerfully and penetratingly convey the theme of chaos and an utter sense of helplessness. Eye-catching, none-too-subtle symbolism (constant flashes of wild animals with teeth bared, for example) and well-written dialogue further accentuate these themes.

The film deliberately makes its audience wildly uncomfortable, successfully imparting Bobby Cooper’s increasing desperation to escape the mounting insanity that envelops and entraps him. As with modern art, U-TURN’s presumed purpose is not to purvey aesthetic pleasure, but to create an effect and communicate an idea. In this, at least, Stone certainly succeeds, for two hours, he fills his audience with an intense desire to flee the movie theater.