White Sands
Set in the cinematically picturesque Southwestern desert, Willem Dafoe plays a small-town lawman called out to a remote location after a dead body is found by some tourists. Along with the body, there is a briefcase with half a million dollars in it. Well, he becomes absolutely obsessed in solving the case. The audience never knows why he feels the need to solve this case instead of turning it over to the federal authorities, other than to spice up his otherwise boring job. Judging by his muscle car and quest for adventure, and despite being happily married with a kid, he seems to be going through a bit of a mid-life crisis. He gets his adventure when he finds a phone number on (actuallyin) the dead man's body, calls it, gets some instructions, and decides to go undercover as the dead man. Pretty soon he's meeting up with a shady Mickey Rourke and falling for Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Meanwhile, the script goes through plot twists and double and triple crosses. The strangest thing is that the movie works. It's a lot of fun, and Dafoe plays the most difficult and unbelievable character with such an easy charm it's hard not to go along with him.--Andy Spletzer