U Turn

Plot synopsis:
Bobby (Sean Penn) is a young drifter driving cross-country in a Ford convertable. He has his left hand bandaged and he is transporting a gym bag full of cash to Los Angeles which he owes. After the opening credits, his car breaks down when the radiator hose bursts. He drives to the outskirts of the nearist town which is Superior, Arizona. He leaves his car with the local simpleton and grease monkey mechanic Darrell (Billy Bob Thornton). Darrell tells Bobby about the broken radiator line and tells him that it will take about three or four hours to fix. Bobby takes the gym bag with the money in it, but leaves a pistol in the car trunk.While wandering around the small town, Bobby meets Grace (Jennifer Lopez) a young, attractive Latina woman coming out of a local hardware store after purchasing drapes. Bobby immediately hits on her and offers to help her carry her drapes to her parked car. They introduce themselves to each other and he tells her about waiting for his car to be fixed. When Grace asks about his bandaged hand, he tells her that he recently had an accident. She offers to take him back to her house where he can have a shower to clean up.While in the shower, it is revealed that the "accident" that happened to his hand was in fact a punishment for the overdue debt - two of his fingers were cut off. After his shower he attempts to seduce Grace, who is cold to his advances. He goes to leave, saying he isn't interested in playing games. The two then kiss, where they are caught by Grace's older husband Jake McKenna (Nick Nolte). Bobby, saying he didn't know she was married, tries to leave but Jake punches him in the face.As Bobby is walking back to town, Jake pulls up beside him and offers him a lift. After a casual conversation about Grace, Jake asks Bobby if he would kill her for a price claiming that he is sick of her games. Bobby laughs this off and asks Jake if he's just trying to "rattle" him.A little later, while Bobby is in a convenience store, the store is held up by two teenage thugs. The robbers take his bag with all his money in it but the shop owner takes out a shotgun and kills them both, unfortunately destroying most of the money in the process which takes a blast from the shotgun. Broke and without the means to even leave the town as he cannot pay the mechanic, Bobby frantically calls nearly everyone he knows trying to get money to fix his car. He even calls the gangster he owes money to asking him for money but the gangster angrily refuses. The gangster now knows where Bobby is and sends someone after him.When Bobby is sitting in a bar drinking a beer, he is approached by Jenny (Claire Danes) a troubled and abused teenage girl who flirts with him. Just then, Toby N. Tucker (Joaquin Phoenix) enters. He is Jenny's aggressive and very possessive boyfriend and a local hoodlum who has nicknamed himself T.N.T. who attempts to provoke a fight with Bobby over Jenny's affections. The fight is stopped in time by the town sheriff Virgil Potter (Powers Boothe). Sheriff Potter is stern to T.N.T. who tells him to stay out of trouble, but he is very unfriendly towards Bobby whom he sees as a stranger in town and the sheriff does not like outsiders. After Bobby truthfully explains about why he is in town, Sheriff Potter orders him to be gone as soon as his car is fixed.Bobby goes back to the mechanic, where he finds that Darrell has done additional work and is asking a higher price. He also busted open the trunk of the car and has taken Bobby's gun. A confrontation breaks out which results in Darrell scratching up the hood of Bobby's car. Darrell says that he will continue working on the car and charging more and more for the work until Bobby has the means to pay him. Darrell refuses to take any payment other then cash.Wondering what to do for money, Bobby remembers the offer Jake made to him earlier in the car. He approaches Jake about the deal, who initially passes the comment off as a joke. Bobby says that he could tell Jake was serious about the offer and that he is serious about taking him up on it. Jake tells him that he would need to take Grace out of town and push her off a cliff in order to make the murder look like a suicide.A dream sequence shows that Bobby couldn't go through with it and ends up having sex with her instead as it cuts back into the real world. Grace cuts the sex short however just before he comes, leading Bobby to call her the "Queen of hot-and-cold". Grace reveals that she is not just Jake's wife; she is also his illegitimate child. Jake sexually abused her from a young age and then married her after her mother died. Her mother was found dead at the bottom of a cliff but her death was ruled a suicide. Grace doesn't believe she killed herself. Her death is eerily similar to how Jake told Bobby to kill Grace. Grace then asks Bobby if he would kill Jake, meaning the two of them could steal his money which Grace would not have access to otherwise. Bobby initially refuses, clearly not trusting Grace.Still broke and aware that the gangsters will send someone to find him, Bobby attempts to buy a ticket out of town in order to escape. Although he doesn't have enough money, the clerk gives him the ticket anyway after he becomes aggressive and hostile. After buying the ticket he sees one of the gangsters driving towards him. However, the Sheriff stops the gangster and arrests him for speeding. Thinking he is safe, Bobby is then attacked by T.N.T. who has been attempting to fight him for most of the film. TNT takes Bobby's ticket, rips it up and eats it, causing Bobby to lose his temper and badly beats him up. Just then, Jenny appears and yells at Bobby to stop beating up her boyfriend (!) Bobby reacts with disbelief as Jenny (having just been beaten and punched in the face by T.N.T. minutes earlier), is now comforting him. Bobby angrily storms out of the bus station, seeing how crazy not only Jenny is, but the entire town is.Knowing he is out of options, Bobby phones Grace and agrees with her plan to kill Jake for his money. She instructs him to come on over to the house after dark for the deed to be done. That evening after the sun sets, Bobby breaks into Jake's house while Jake is having sex with Grace, but Bobby accidentally makes a noise. Jake goes downstairs to investigate and finds Bobby, who then tells Jake that killing him was Grace's idea and that he'll kill Grace for just enough money to pay for a car. Grace overhears this and attacks Bobby when he walks into the room. However, she is really waiting for Jake to return so that she can kill him. After killing Jake, Bobby and Grace unlock his safe to find $200,000 in cash. They then have sex in front of his dead body.The next morning, Bobby goes to Darrell to pay him and finally gets his car back. When Bobby returns to the house, Grace's car is gone. Bobby thinks she has run off with the all the money but she shows up at the front door. As they drive off and out of town in Bobby's car, however, they are pulled over by Sheriff Potter. Here we find out that Grace has also been sleeping with him. Grace appears to turn on Bobby, blaming him for Jake's death and telling the sheriff that Bobby just killed her husband. However, just as Sheriff Potter places Bobby under arrest, she pulls out her gun and shoots the sheriff dead. Bobby helps Grace put the sheriff in the car trunk with Jake.As Bobby and Grace are dumping the two bodies off a cliff, Bobby elbows Grace in the nose and takes her gun, telling her that he does not trust her and that when they reach California they will split the money and go their separate ways. Grace says that when she blamed Jake's death on Bobby, she was merely baiting the Sheriff so she could kill him, much like Bobby baited Jake when he said he would kill Grace. The implication seems to be that Bobby would have killed Grace rather than Jake if he'd had to. As they are talking, Grace suddenly pushes Bobby over the cliff, not killing him but severely injuring him. Grace smirks and tells Bobby laying at the bottom of the 60-foot cliff that his suspicions about her were correct; she really is too greedy to split the money in any way, and she used him so she could steal all of Jake's money for herself. She also tells Bobby that SHE was the one who killed her mother by pushing her off the very same cliff, for reasons not made clear.As Grace gets back in the car to drive off, she realizes that Bobby has taken the keys. Bobby pleads with her to come down and help him. She does so, knowing she needs the keys. When she gets close enough however, he strangles her to death with his bare hands. Grace manages to shoot Bobby with her gun before she expires, but it is a non-fatal wound to his right hip. Bobby then makes the grueling journey back up the cliff with a broken leg, a broken arm, his gunshot wound and several other serious and superficial injuries. Relieved that he is finally back in his car (and with all the money), he starts the car to drive off, only for the radiator hose to burst again like it did in the opening scene. Bobby sits back and laughs insanely of his continuing bad luck as he looks up at the bright blue sky... aware that he will now die in the desert heat without anyone to help him now.

Tags: comedy, neo noir, murder, violence, flashback, romantic

Review:
I'm not saying that it was the best movie ever, but it sure deserves better than what most people over here say about it.The story starts with Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn), driving somewhere in the middle of the desert in Arizona, on his way to pay the bookies that have already taken two of his fingers because he was too late to pay them.
With people like Sean Penn, Billy Bob Thornton, Joaquin Phoenix and Nick Nolte I don't expect anything less than a good performance.
For a picture of this type, "U-Turn" is very good indeed.Sean Penn is smashing, Nolte has never been creepier, and Jennifer Lopez is, er, extremely effective in this film's only real female role.
But the solid script by John Ridley, the letter-perfect performances, and Stone's sure directorial hand make this one of his better films.This movie is out of the theatres, so one word to you parents about "U-Turn."  This is not one to watch in the presence of the kiddies.
It is closest to Stone's other film "Natural Born Killers" by way of stylish camera shots and the addition of comedy into a dramatic setting.Sean Penn brilliantly plays the lead character, whose car blows a radiator hose out in the middle of the Arizona desert, and the closest town is that of Superior, AZ, a dirt-road town with barely 1,000 people living there, if that.
Therefore, he's constantly running in circles to get out of this town.There is an all-star cast (back then, and now) of actors: Jennifer Lopez (a better singer than actress), Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Bob Thornton (the best among the bunch as the hick mechanic), Sean Penn, Claire Danes, Liv Tyler (only for a second in the train station), and Jon Voight...all packed into a nice DVD.
Again the camera shots were awesome, and they had that Oliver Stone quality of the 90's where he would switch frames with the villain of the movie with an animal skull and switch the point-of-view to see what the actors are seeing, and so on.I didn't like the ending so much.
I also hated Jennifer Lopez's delivery of lines (just like in any other movie with her...The Cell, etc) because they feel so fake and put on that you know the director was just looking for T&A for the film.
She has a thick accent straying too much towards Latino that you don't pick up on any cultural change until you get the story.Overall, though, (bad point aside) it is a brilliant movie that is easy to watch if you like the other Stone films.
Brilliant & hallucinatory cinematography, impeccable use of music, and a handful of dark, edgy character sketches all work together very nicely to make this bleak, dark-humoured desert noir an overlooked highlight of Oliver Stone's career.
The highly evocative atmosphere plays out against the Arizona desert in a way that (in addition to foreshadowing some of the work done in Terry Gilliam's own twisted little masterpiece 'Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas') seems to mirror, in a more subtle and tasteful manner,  much of Stone's work in 'Natural Born Killers'.
Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, and Jennifer Lopez all turn in great performances and Billy Bob Thornton's eccentric character sketch elevates what may be defined as a bit part to a far more relevant status.
`U Turn' takes place during a hot day in Arizona where we meet our principal character, Bobby (Penn), who is on his way to California to pay a debt to the mob that has helped him in one way or the other.
Richardson's craft with a camera can be seen in such other movies as `The Horse Whisperer,' `Snow Falling On Cedars,' and `The Four Feathers.' With its rough cuts, non-steady cam shots, and scenes filmed as the sun glaring down on the actors, Richardson's work gives a harsh and nauseating feel to the film.
Sean Penn turns in a great performance as does Nick Nolte, Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Voight.Jennifer Lopez does her best to keep up with the seasoned professionals and by and large succeeds.
U-Turn is about a man named Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn) who is on his way to pay a debt to a gangster when his car breaks down in the small, redneck town of Superior.
From here, there are twists and turns in the plot all the way to the very end of the movie.Sean Penn was decent as Bobby, but seemed a bit week and was taken advantage of a bit too easily.
Billy Bob Thornton looks nothing like him and is away with it, Jennifer Lopez is attractive an alluring, Nick Nolte is totally convincing and great as the wicked husband, Joiquin Phoenix is mad as TNT and possibly the best is John Voight as a blind homeless person!A great film with a good ending...
It's highlight is mostly the great cast and great acting.U-Turn is definitely at the bottom of the list when it comes to Oliver Stone films, but if you've seen 'em all, you might as well see this one, too.
SEE his movie.With twists and turns along the highway of deceit and corruption, this is a great film to watch.
Sean Penn is stranded in a strange city where everybody seems to realize his problems and his struggle, and insist on being particularly mean to him, just for the sake of being mean.It is a lot like Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's Vacation or Griffin Dunne in After Hours, in the sense that we watch an incredibly hapless main character go through an incredibly terrible day and we're supposed to call that entertainment.
Except that instead of a comedy this one is a mean and boring excuse for a thriller where everybody is weird and bad-ass, so the whole thing reeks of Tarantino or any of those awful El Mariachi sequels.There are indeed several twists in the plot, but all of them are predictable and absolutely unable to make the film a little interesting.
There are lots of good acting, but the story and the overall atmosphere is so brain dead that I couldn't really enjoy the acting.I always found that Oliver Stone's movies were excessively long-winded and pretentious.
Your average Oliver Stone fan would say (at least in my experience) that U Turn is his worst film.
I think Oliver Stone may well be the best director there is and in my opinion U Turn is his best film.In Hollywood you get movies that are actually vehicles as they say for action, gratuitous sex, violence, cheap scares, laughs, etc.
This is one of those movies where time is a factor working against the character in need of a resolution but is restrained with a host of bizarre circumstances such as a busted car pipe, a Russian gangster on his tail, a beautiful but dangerous beauty with a complex past, a U-turn, and a host of other goodies for the plot storyline.
Sean Penn is great as always, Lopez surprised me by actually doing a half decent job acting, something she hasn't done in any of the other films I've seen her in (with the exception of Out of Sight...
I have to say, though, that the characters that make this film entertaining and sometimes even hilarious are Billy Bob Thornton's disgusting mechanic and Joaquin Phoenix's violent TNT.
It is not so much that u-turns abound, the plot is not so much twisted as continually pulling the rug out from underneath the audience.Perhaps the book connects the dots a bit better, the film relies heavily upon interesting character exaggerations, along with Ennio Morricone (woo hoo!) and Oliver Stone's splashy style.The color of the film is sweltering as the Arizona sun.
Well, I certainly can't say that U-TURN is a boring movie, with all those weird characters, weird situations, and (especially) the weird direction that's akin to Stone's earlier NATURAL BORN KILLERS.
If Mr. Stone or Mr. Penn or even Miss Lopez need the tiny paycheck that a movie like "U -Turn" offers, why not do some short stints at a local community theater?
A very promising cast, interesting plot twists and an exceptional performance by Billy Bob Thorton couldn't save this film from the heavy-handed and predictably methodical directing style of Stone.
Oliver Stone is the best - hell, maybe the ONLY - political filmmaker in Hollywood right now, but I guess after the beating he's taken over great films like PLATOON, JFK, and NIXON, he decided to retreat into the world of film noir.
I haven't been much of a Stone fan in recent years, but I rented this movie because I like Sean Penn and the trailer looked good.
U-turn was supposed to be this modern Film Noir movie where nothing is as it is supposed to be, including the characters being the opposite of what they appear to be.
Stone fails to complete this and the movie turns out to be nothing but a poor story about a man entangling himself in a web of dangerous circumstances in a small town, all spun together in a weak plot that bores the s..t out of you.
Oliver Stone directs this dramatic dark comedy about a small-time hood(Sean Penn)on the run with mob money.
Oliver Stone brought us Natural Born Killers, Platoon, JFK and other good films.
Even though the acting is quite good in general (Sean Penn is a very good actor, and Billy Bob Thornton is fine too), Jennifer Lopez was getting on my nerves.
By the way, film has ensemble cast including Joaquin Phoenix, who portrays one of the hilarious characters in the film.I recommends U Turn to everyone, it is such a great black comedy and I don't know what's critics problem with that.
There's Jennifer Lopez not only showing her many enticing curves but a pretty respectable ability to act in her femme fatale role.Though I'm not a Sean Penn admirer I have to admit he does well here as a shady drifter whose vintage car breaks down in a desert small town and keeps him from leaving because he just can't seem to come up with the money for the repair.
Oliver Stone's "U Turn" is a small town Arizona story with love crosses and plot twists galore.
A drifter (Sean Penn) breaks down in the Arizona back-woods and gets entangled with a spitfire (Jennifer Lopez) who wants to leave her twisted, abusive husband (Nick Nolte).
Turns out Nolte's character Jake wants Grace dead as well.I'm not saying that "U-Turn" is Oliver Stone's best film, but it's definitely my personal favorite of his.
Sean Penn gets involved in murder plot, and can't seem to find his way out of a dead end town.
Billy Bob Thornton and Sean Penn are always great, and a grizzly Nick Nolte, and sexy Jennifer Lopez are also solid.
I enjoyed the over the top acting of Billy bob in this film .It has more twist and turns that will make your head spin .I love Jeniffer Lopez she is a screwed up girl in the head that totally turned off my friend who is in love with her.Stone is a master that takes the envelope of film making and pushes it to the extreme ,its a wild ride with a great ending it will put you on the ground with laughter..
No actors are wasted at all, in my opinion, even Sean Penn shines as bright as the Arizona sun his character is in and I was particularly surprised with his tormented performance as a man stranded in the middle of nowhere, a fear I suppose everyone has deep inside...he's perfect for the role.
Inclined to dislike much of Oliver Stone's work, I did not appreciate U Turn until the second viewing, where I found myself reading the film as comedy and appreciating the excellent timing of the brilliant Sean Penn.
Capturing the feel and look of heat better than any film since Do the Right Thing, Stone stylistically echoes his dreadful and idiotic Natural Born Killers, but ultimately makes a film one hundred times more entertaining.
Look at all the famous name...Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes, Jon Voight, Billy Bob Thornton, even a cameo by Liv Tyler (yes, THAT Liv Tyler)...and the movie sucks.
To me, despite the director and stellar cast, this film came off as lifeless, I mean Sean Penn sleepwalked through the movie, and Jennifer Lopez just cant act.
Gorgeous desert scenery and some oddball characters highlight this neo-noir film about a young man named Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn) who, while trying to evade mobsters, gets stuck in a small Arizona town.
While this film isn't in the greatest form of the classic director Oliver Stone, it isn't his worst film like many have said (personally, I don't think Stone has ever made a really bad movie).
U Turn is a film noir type of movie with Sean Penn getting mixed up with weirdos on his way to get to Vegas.
These weirdos include Jennifer Lopez (one of her two films where she shows breast) as a seductive wife, Nick Nolte as a crazy husband and other towners like Jon Voight and Billy Bob Thornton.
With the odds stacking up against Bobby he finds himself drawn deeper into greed, theft and murder.This was a step away from political dramas and conspiracy thrillers for Oliver Stone, here he takes a standard film-noir plot and gives it his own touch.
With Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Jon Voight, Billy Bob Thornton and Jennifer Lopez, and directed by Oliver Stone, this looked an appealing video.
All performances are excellent, especially that of Jennifer Lopez and Sean Penn, but Nick Nolte also sizzles and Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Voight put in great character pieces.
Sean Penn is playing his part great and even a Miss Lopez has one of her better movie performances here (the other being Out of Sight ...
Oliver Stone's 'U-Turn' is a film about a day that turns into a living nightmare, in the manner of Scorcese's 'After Hours' and other similar movies.
Sean Penn play his role of Bobby strictly for laughs and the rest of the cast seem to be acting on their day off from shooting their real movies, expect Jennifer Lopez who takes herself so seriously it almost gets to a point where she is a turn off.
Or could it have been that Stone is getting a little cocky and is throwing shooting his movie in a offbeat style so that we will praise this as another work of art that sits up there right next to the likes of Natural Born Killers, Platoon or JFK?
Unlucky u might b like Sean Penn, very sexy Jennifer Lopez, one of the most beautiful ladies around the planet these days, and as successful as an actor as she is a singer, unfortunately she doesn't participate in lots of movies.....
successful Oliver Stone, like his other movies he always is...
So waiting 4 another Oliver Stone's movie, another act by Jenifer Lopez, and another unlucky adventure of Sean Penn.......
I mean im a big fan of Sean Penn and Jennifer Lopez, but not even they could save this movie from disaster.
Some great actors (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Jon Voight, Billy Bob Thornton, etc) are wasted.
I generally enjoy Oliver Stone films (JFK, Platoon, Nixon) but U-Turn is just excruciating..
I like the backdrop, the story was great, never boring, and the long list of eccentric characters in particular, Billy Bob Thornton as the hick mechanic, Nick Nolte as the vile husband of Jennifer Lopez and the annoying couple Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Danes..
Another neo-noir instant classic: my all-time favorite Oliver Stone film.
Great cast playing weird characters, an intrinsic plot that keeps you guessing and Stone's unique visuals all add up to one hell of a ride through Superior, Arizona.
I had never heard of 'U Turn' before and only really bought it for one reason, Sean Penn, but upon watching it I was drawn into the world of Oliver Stone once again.
My only complaint is that the story lacks a certain rythm, but it's still very fascinating.OVERALL (not an average): ***1/2 - Basically, if you like film-noirs, if you like dark, twisted plots, and if you like Stone's style, you'll like this movie..
"Film Noir" works best in the shadows..."U-Turn" is to Oliver Stone what "Wild at Heart" was to David Lynch.
but it's like taking a very long trip in a really great car, only to end up in an extremely dull place that just wasn't quite worth the time or the drive (which, now that I think about it, is a very good way of describing the movie - in more ways than one).6/10.
A director (Oliver Stone) who is not perfect, but has made generally good films.
Moreover, you have major league actors like Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Powers Booth, Billy Bob Thornton, and Joaquin Phoenix.
Several of my favorite actors are in this film: Sean Penn, Billy Bob Thornton, Powers Boothe, and Joaquin Phoenix.
I thought the kids would wander off to watch basketball, instead we were all riveted to the screen.Terrific cast - Jennifer Lopez as the femme fatale (in all senses of the phrase), Sean Penn (not playing the bad guy - he looks sweet compared to everyone else!), Nick Nolte being warped, and cameos by Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix as bimbos, Julie Haggerty as a tough waitress.Very bloody, very 4-letter words, pretty explicit.Who knew that Oliver Stone had a sense of humor?
Sean Penn was great in his role, Jennifer Lopez gave a good performance in this film early in her career.
This is the best Oliver Stone film I have seen and one of my favs, 10/10.
Sean Penn gives his best performance since Dead Man Walking, Jennifer Lopez is unusually good and the way Stone makes his movies is brilliant.