The Greatest One-Man Show!

Rating: 7/10 (22 March 2008)

Jack Nicholson is brilliant.
In the script, on the page, he has little to say (his best lines are improvised) and hackneyed B-Movie actions to perform. Same for every other character in this mediocre script, except "Delbert Grady" (Philip Stone), whose few simple lines belie a monstrous context (which his deadly performance makes even more sinister and threatening).
One-Man show? Yes. Nicholson's.
Stanley Kubrick, perhaps the coldest director of all time, structures this second-rate story and script with his usual arresting visuals and watchwork precision.
Kubrick may have had a heart, but it only shows once on film. His most successful film, "2001: A Space Odyssey," is a triumph of technology over humanity. Ironically, Kubrick's obsession with technology and his near-total erasure of individual human character (the humans in "2001" exist solely to service technology) results in Kubrick's most profoundly heartfelt human film.
Otherwise, Kubrick's ouevre is relentlessly heartless and calculated. Actors either brought dimensions to their roles, or they didn't. Kubrick certainly was incapable (or uninterested) of bringing depths from mediocre actors. If you didn't bring it to the set, he didn't know how to elicit it.
Hence we have the annoyingly mannered and minimally talented Shelley Duvall, so magnificently used by Robert Altman three years earlier in "3 Women," unbelievable in even her simplest line-readings and laughably bug-eyed over-the-top in her "terrorized" sequences.
Danny Lloyd, who plays Jack's and Shelley's little son, let's just say he's no Haley Joel Osment. He is, in fact, terrible. More open-mouthed bug-eyed "terror." Just like Shelley. One note.
Scatman Crothers? Simply can't act. Period. Can't make a simple, "Hello?" on the phone sound real. Nice guy, presumably. Pathetic "actor." Which again goes back to Kubrick. Who, exactly, HIRED these weak performers in the first place?
Then, there's Jack Nicholson. Given little to say or do, beyond "horror movie" clichés, by the script or the director -- Nicholson the Pro takes his character and skins it alive for us, on camera. One of the most astonishing male performances in cinema history.
And it's all his.
It's not in the writing, not in the direction. Some of it's in John Alcott's magnificent cinematography.
But essentially this is an actor of true genius turning crap into gold.
Nicholson, and Nicholson alone, is what elevates this descent into psychosis a worthy, unforgettable, piece of work.