From: frankm@microsoft.com (Frank R.A.J. Maloney)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: RAISING CAIN
Summary: r.a.m.r. #01481
Keywords: author=Maloney
Date: 12 Aug 92 17:00:09 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbnewsj.1992Aug12.170009.6735
Reply-To: frankm@microsoft.com (Frank R.A.J. Maloney)
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA


			       RAISING CAIN
		       A film review by Frank Maloney
			Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney

     RAISING CAIN is a film directed and written by Brian De Palma.  It
stars John Lithgow, Lolita Davidovich, Steven Bauer, Frances Sternhagen.
Rated R for violence and subject matter.

     RAISING CAIN is a psychological thriller with a sense of humor.  It
is also Brian De Palma's chance to exorcise some his misogynistic
reputation, a reputation enforced by BODY DOUBLE, OBSESSION, and DRESSED
TO KILL.  With Lolita Davidovich's strong, scrappy performance, he
certainly succeeds in that.  But as for his other reputation as a
plagiarist of Hitchcock and others, CAIN is only going to advance the
negative arguments.  There are the almost mandatory allusions to, or
borrowings from, PSYCHO, but there is also Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM
about a killer raised by a sadistic father.  CAIN involves multiple
personalities and a wacko father and a plot to steal children.  In the
process, a little blood is spilt.

     I must say I am of two minds about CAIN.  It is a showy
tour-de-force for De Palma and for John Lithgow, who plays three
characters and five personalities.  Davidovich lets loose with another
of her high-energy performances, even though she is limited to one role.
Other actors include Steven Bauer, as the dark, handsome other man, in a
performance that is most interesting when he has the least amount of
clothes on, and Frances Sternhagen as the shrink-who-explains-it-all
with a goofy Mitteleuropa accent and an even goofier wig (the wig at
least is explained in the story) is tough and cute.

     Sternhagen is also the focus of a four-and-a-half minute tracking
shot through corridors, down stairs, in and out of elevators.  She keeps
making wrong turns and it is pretty funny, but typically ostentatious on
De Palma's part without a lot of rationale; I had to ask myself whether
there wasn't an elevator that would have taken them the whole way.  And
this is a symbol for my most negative feelings about CAIN.  De Palma is
a director of great ambition, but almost no taste, one who thinks tricky
shots, switching lenses, pseudo-Hitchcockian camera angles, and all the
other technical tricks he steals are their own reward, their own
justification.  The camera is just too busy and there is no point to it
with Lithgow and Davidovich knocking themselves out for us in front of
the camera, if they can remember where the damn thing is now.

     There are thrills, chills, laughter, and horror through RAISING
CAIN, but the end effect is purposeless, without any moral center, just
cynical manipulation of the audience and the characters, mere campiness
and vapid technique, and that's always sad and a cheat.

     I can recommend RAISING CAIN with reservations, but definitely
catch a cheap matinee.

-- 
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews