Sunchaser
(a.k.a. The Sunchaser)
(1996)
Director: Michael
Cimino
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jon Seda, Anne Bancroft
Throughout Hollywood history there have always been a
few so-called "bad boys" working as directors. Some of these directors
have been given this label because of their intent to shock (like John
Waters did with movies like Pink Flamingoes and Desperate
Living)
or sneaking in a personal philosophy in their works that isn't exactly
welcomed by many audience members, in the vein of what Sam Peckinpah
did in movies like Straw Dogs. Then there are those
directors who were notorious for their descent into self-indulgence and
wretched excess, which often ended up mostly or completely destroying
their directorial careers sooner or later - Erich Von Stroheim, for
one. Michael Cimino is another such director, though his directorial
career before disaster hit was nowhere as long as Von Stroheim's. Many
people will know this disaster or have some inkling of it by the
mention of two words:
Heaven's Gate. Not only was the movie a huge critical and
financial disaster, Cimino's strong penchant towards excess while
making it ended up bankrupting United Artists. (Though UA itself shares
a lot of the blame for its demise for doing essentially nothing during
filming to stop Cimino from overspending.)
I am sure a lot of people don't know what happened to
Cimino after this debacle, and may be curious to know if he was ever
able to return to directing,
whether in Hollywood or elsewhere. Although he has managed to more or
less continue his filmmaking career since Heaven's Gate,
he has not managed to really regain any of the status he lost after
that movie. His behavior has gotten him removed from some projects
before shooting started (like Footloose), and this
behavior of his may have
played a part in some other projects of his being completely cancelled.
His projects that did get completed and he managed to stay with didn't
make any real difference to his career. Not only has he had the
misfortune to direct Mickey Rourke three times, each project
was a disaster for him; his direction on The Pope Of Greenwich
Village didn't get a screen credit, Year Of The Dragon got
an iffy reaction from critics and the box
office, and his remake of Desperate Hours... well, the
less said about
it, the better. There was also The Godfather wannabe The
Sicilian, which critically and financially did just about as
well as Desperate Hours.
There is one other post-Heaven's Gate effort
of his, which also happens to be his last directorial effort to date: Sunchaser,
which he also produced. Never heard of it? Well, this web site is called
"The Unknown Movies" for a reason. Seriously, the reason why you
haven't heard of it is that its North American distributor (Warner
Brothers) gave it virtually no theatrical release, probably only giving
it that tiny release at all so it could fulfill a contractual clause
requiring that it have some kind of theatrical release. Clearly, WB had
no confidence in the movie at all, and after watching it for myself, I
had a pretty good idea why they felt that particular way. Overall
Sunchaser is an extremely big mess, not only made up of a
collection of poor or half-baked ideas, but all connected together with
the finesse of a car driver speedily driving from idea to idea with
seeming little idea of any logical route to follow, and along a rough
and difficult-to-manoeuvre surface equal to that of the desert location
the movie's two protagonists find themselves traveling across.
Apparently, Cimino's habit of leaping into the creation of a movie to
fulfill various and sudden whims without previously taking the time to
think about them carefully - or the actual script itself - didn't die
with Heaven's Gate after all. It must be noted that the
movie does have some good moments, but when you see the quality
of the material surrounding these moments, they seem to more come out
of accident than from any lapses into good judgment.
I can imagine that Woody Harrelson was attracted to this
project by the fact that it was a rare chance to play a serious role
(and without irony or parody, as in Natural Born Killers.)
His character is Michael Reynolds, an L.A. oncologist who has achieved
great success, not only owning a $175,000 sports car which he
oh-so-happily drives to work, but when the movie starts is currently
anticipating a promotion in the hospital, as well as negotiating for a
new multi-million dollar home for himself and his family. You guessed
it - all this happiness and personal success of his can only mean that
somewhere along the way he forget his humanity and sensitivity, which
is confirmed in an early scene where he steps out of a session with one
of his cancer patients to talk to his wife for less than a minute about
their present bid for their new home. (At least, for a change, this
familiar stereotype is not neglectful of his family.)
Naturally, he will need not only be taught several
lessons about life and what are the most important things about it during a long and hard
journey, but learn all this from someone who is a complete opposite
from him - most likely someone who is of a different ethnicity. That
someone in this case is Brandon "Blue" Monroe (Seda, from the
TV shows Oz and Homicide), a 16 year-old half-Navajo
gangbanger youth who is not only incarcerated for murder and armed
robbery, but has been stricken with retroperitoneal sarcoma and only
has a couple of months to live. The two meet at the hospital when Blue
is brought in for treatment and Michael is assigned to be his doctor.
As expected, the two of them don't exactly get along, and the tension
between them just increases when Blue manages to get a hold of a gun
and kidnap Michael, forcing him to drive the two of them out of L.A.
Though the journey doesn't end once that happens; Blue forces Michael
to drive on out of California into Arizona, for reasons he initially
keeps to himself but eventually reveals. Having remembered his exposure
to his Navajo heritage during his imprisonment, Blue wants to be taken
to a mountaintop lake a medicine man told him about when he was
younger, a special lake that reportedly has the power to heal people
even with supposedly uncurable illnesses.
Personally, I find it a bit difficult to believe that
someone we quickly learn has been hardened by years of urban life and
from committing multiple major felonies (including the murder of his
stepfather) could all of a sudden have a strong belief in things of a
mystic vein and be uttering mantras like "May beauty be before me / May
beauty be behind me". Though since desperate times often find
themselves solved by desperate measures, I guess it's possible a
homicidal punk could eventually find himself transformed into this way
of thinking, especially with the realization that he has a disease that
will kill him very soon... just not this particular homicidal
punk. This is not a criticism of Jon Seda's performance; though past
his teenage years when he took on this role, he is very believable as a
hardened foul-mouthed gangbanger. Blue is a punk who has seen and
experienced so much absolute poison in his short lifetime that
everything he does and says conveys an animal-like rage within him.
Even during his calmer moments you sense that the slightest thing could
set him off, and when he grabs a gun and presses it against somebody's
head, this action is not only utterly convincing, you really believe he
could kill someone without the slightest thought about it afterwards.
Seda does all this and everything else given to him nothing less than
top-notch, so any problems the movie has definitely does not come from
him.
The problem that I had with the character of Blue was
that I couldn't believe that he had developed such spiritual beliefs
that I mentioned earlier. Being locked up in maximum security and
dealing both with the physical effects of his
disease and the knowledge that he was being slowly killed by it does
not seem to have affected his character at all. For most of the movie
he comes across in the most vicious, callous, and self-centered way you
can imagine. It's not that he constantly comes across in this manner
from any internal feelings of desperateness - I could believe that, and
his sadistic behavior would have been easier to digest knowing that he
was suffering inside - it's that the screenplay generally depicts him
as being mean for mean's sake. He has a virtual giggle in his demeanor
as he slaps Dr. Reynolds around, threatening to blow off his "cap" and
using crude kinds of psychology to torture him. And this same person is
supposed to have regrasped a spiritual part of his heritage? I don't
buy it. Not only is Blue's behavior unbelievable for someone believing
and seeking spiritual comfort of some sort, it turns off any interest
we might have had for his quest. Do we care about finding out if an
unredeemed and often cruel excuse for a human being manages to complete
a great quest of this nature? I don't know about you, but I certainly
don't.
Not only is it unbelievable that Blue has a spiritual
belief while having an utter contempt towards humanity simultaneously,
it is equally implausible that his character undergoes a transformation
that makes him "nice" (or more exactly, less annoying and threatening
than usual)... at least a transformation that is as quick and sudden as
the one here. In fact, in some ways it is hard to call it a
transformation because there is no visible evolution between his
initial ornery manner to his subsequent more tolerable attitude. One
minute he is being his usual fierce self, and then, for no real reason
at all, he is more sedate and stays that way for the rest of the movie.
Dr. Reynolds himself also goes through a unexplainable transformation
at this point of the movie; he finally finds himself free to go after a
couple of days of non-stop terror and abuse, and what does he do? Well,
I could believe that he would seek medical attention for Blue when his
condition turns bad at one point - he is a doctor after all, sworn to
heal everyone? But to not only rob a hospital at gunpoint for medical
supplies but being now a willing chauffeur who wants to take Blue to
this secret location in the middle of nowhere? I don't buy that any
doctor would do this, not even Dr. Reynolds, who we learn very little
about. It is revealed that his brother died of cancer when he was a
boy, but this fact (and the several minutes of black-and-white
flashbacks of it) in the end don't seem to do anything.
It's not surprising that with to play such a weakly
constructed character, Harrelson is wildly inconsistent with his
performance. When his character is first seen, starting work for the
day at the hospital and talking shop with his fellow doctors, Harrelson
almost seems to be playing it for laughs and this whole serious-minded
sequence as a result plays like a bad parody. Other moments later in
the movie, like his frantic prayer to God, are equally laughable and
can't be taken seriously. In general, though, Harrelson plays Dr.
Reynolds as too high-pitched, both in voice and attitude; you would
expect someone who has worked his way to becoming such a respected
physician to be more weathered, more professional. There are some
scenes when Harrelson does find the right note for Dr. Reynolds.
Surprisingly they are the most challenging scenes, whenever his
character gets face-to-face with Blue in a mutual explosive rage.
Though the armed Blue clearly has the upper hand in these
confrontations and Dr. Reynolds never dares to push things too far,
Harrelson still manages to hold his own, doing very well in showing
Reynolds' fear, rage, and struggle to find a common ground. Both actors
help to makes these verbal battles the best scenes in the movie. Though
a number of these confrontations end up giving little or no advance to
the story, they are compelling all the same.
Cimino's direction of these verbal battles also is a big
reason why they have such impact; even when the characters are not as
vocal with their threats and insults, there is a violent feeling in the
atmosphere that makes you think things could quickly go to hell.
The standout sequence is in the diner, where customers just feet away
are oblivious to Blue holding a gun on Reynolds, and nearby are some
bikers that clearly Reynolds wonders could be used to his advantage...
or maybe just end up aggravating the situation even further. There is
also a natural feeling to this scene as well, a natural feeling
uncommon in Hollywood movies that makes this situation feel more real
instead of being shot on a constructed set and the action
choreographed. You also sense that same interesting feel in other
sequences, like when Blue and Reynolds find themselves in the middle of
an unrelated crowded crime scene on their way out of Los Angeles.
Cimino adds a few other nice touches here and there, like some
spectacular American southwest landscapes (nicely photographed by
Douglas Milsome); it's unfortunately there is currently no letterboxed
edition of this movie available in order to be able to fully appreciate
it. Unfortunately, for every personal touch Cimino makes on
Sunchaser that could be considered both appropriate and
professionally done, he makes at least three or four serious
miscalculations, sometimes of such a grand nature that it's hard to
imagine even a truly incompetent director like Albert Pyun would do
them. Clearly Sunchaser was written with the intent to
be a serious human drama, so why does the movie open with the prison
transport taking Blue to his regular checkup not only speeding at
breakneck speed along the L.A. freeway, but with its siren shrieking
and its lights flashing? Not only that, but with military-sounding
music (provided by composer Maurice Jarre) drumming away as the opening
credits also simultaneously play out, written in a font that would be
more appropriate for Miami Vice.
Not only is there a lot of material presented in a
similarly inappropriate way, there is a lot of other material that was
simply poorly conceived even before Cimino got his hands on it. The
third-billed Anne Bancroft actually just appears once, a bizarre scene
that serves absolutely no purpose, where she meets the two leads and
utters some mystical mumbo-jumbo before fading into the dust of the
horizon. Other unexplainable things include the development of the
police thinking that Reynolds was actually behind the kidnapping
(despite the fact it happened in front of a policeman) and when
Reynolds' mother arrives in L.A. to comfort her daughter-in-law and
granddaughter... and not only ends up doing nothing, I don't think she
even got to say one word of dialogue. There are other curious thinks
like Reynolds' mother that strongly suggest that despite the movie's
present length (over two hours), it originally had a running time that
was much longer. It's possible a resurrected longer version might fill
in these missing gaps, but it would do little to compensate for Sunchaser's
other deficiencies. If Cimino believed that this poorly-conceived story
would resurrect his fallen career, well, he was chasing rainbows.
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See also: Breezy, Rabid Dogs, Your Three
Minutes Are Up
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