' traffic violation ' dr .
daniel 's review of u - turn dr .
d 's rating : critical condition ( okay , here 's the deal .
i 'll be the first one to grant that everybody needs a day off now and then .
i 'll even go so far as to say that a vacation is a necessary part of doing any job well .
i mean , hey , i 've been known to stretch a weekend into a three - day outing , if friday looks to be a slow day .
and if monday ai n't looking like a pick - me - up , well , i 've been known to give martha nell a call and say , " do me a favor , sweetheart .
bump old man ferguson 's boil lancing to tuesday morning , and tell miss audrey that i 'll swing by her house monday evening and see if we ca n't get her trick knee back in line .
"
a simple sentence like that , and
i 've got a nice four - day fishing trip with the boys , or more often than not , a trip up to cherokee , n .
c . , for jackpot bingo and assorted other mountain funnery .
but the point is , if you take a day off , do something different .
if you 've worked yourself silly for months , relax a bit .
sleep in .
eat pancakes at noon .
microwave an egg in its shell .
watch pro wrestling with the sound off .
listen to some barry white records at high speed .
whatever .
but do not , under any circumstances , spend your vacation doing the same thing you do for a living .
and , if you do , do n't make the final product look ten times worse than it would any other time .
because i do not want to hear your sob stories , oliver stone .
you apparently thought you needed a break from making " important films .
" cool .
so you found this hinky little book and decided to make it a movie .
that 's cool , too .
but , ollie , old sage , do not take a good story and a hot cast and make one of the most pointless and worthless films of the decade .
i 'm just eager to meet you one day
, so i can buy you a stoli , look you in the eye and say , " what in the wide world of sports were you thinking with u - turn ?
" and i 'll stand there staring '
til i get a straight answer .
sean penn stars u - turn , as bobby , a drifter
who 's had some troubles a while back .
he 's heading cross the desert minus two fingers when his mustang ragtop blows a radiator hose , stranding him in superior , arizona , held there by an " ignorant , inbred , turtleneck hick " of a mechanic named darrell .
while darrell puts a new hose on the ride , bobby walks into town to see what 's cooking .
is it needless of me to say that superior , arizona , is not exactly the shiny scrubbed home of all things lovely ?
probably not .
bobby meets up with grace ( jennifer lopez ) , who invites him back to her place , for drape - hanging and other domestic issues .
just as those issues are starting up , grace 's husband , jake , storms in , looking like check - out day of the elks lodge convention .
just beats bobby silly .
bobby takes to the road , only to meet up with jake again , and jake asks bobby to kill grace .
a little while later , grace asks bobby to kill jake .
them murderous arizonians .
got ta love 'em .
if any of this sounds familiar , congratulations .
you win a kewpie doll .
the story is a straight shoplift of red rock west , a cult favorite a few years back from john dahl , maker of the phenomenal the last seduction .
but the contest does n't end there , guys and gals .
we get steals from russ meyer movies , where everybody in town is horny and sweaty .
we get the town from bad day at black rock , minus the train , plus busty women who can speak .
look at any schwarzenegger film , and you 'll see our hero , bobby , as bobby has a mudhole stomped in his keister a dozen times ,
has his ribs stove in at least fifteen times , gets bit by a tarantula , gets shot at , and ends up with vultures circling overhead , all the while getting up like he just got a shaving nick .
bobby as terminator ?
stretch it a bit , and we have a five - finger discount from doc hollywood , where the whole story occurs because of car trouble , forcing the main character to stay at the mercy of the town and the mechanic .
okay , he 's working from a book , so maybe ollie 's not totally to blame for blatantly copping these ideas .
i just expect a man who can make up an alternative history of the united states to be able to craft a few original ideas before exposing the negative .
i just wish he had n't brought a cast like this together for what amounts to
a group toe - stub .
sean penn gives a great performance , and jennifer lopez and nick nolte are as on target as they can be , playing over - the - top caricatures of stereotype characters .
the best thing about the movie is watching penn react to the madness around him and try to figure out exactly what the blankety - blank is going on . too bad
it 's not fun to watch when it 's happening to us . . .
while we sit through
this mess of a film .
u - turn is not a bad film if you 're a fan of technique .
it 's the oliver stone you 've always known .
robert richardson is his usual cinematographer , and rob and ollie know how to shoot a flick -- great camera angles , shifting viewpoints , wicked colors , nice looking pictures .
but pictures of what ?
i think i 'd rather stare at a xeroxed envelope for two hours than try to figure out the tilt - o - whirl point of this loser film
.
plot twists are one thing , repetition is almost unforgivable , and this is dang near as unforgivable as any movie
i 've seen in the past five years .
oliver
, i know your body of work is nothing to sniff at .
you 've been nice enough to limit us to only one doors movie , and films like platoon , jfk , wall street and nixon give us plenty to dig on .
your scripts are certainly respectable , your budgets are up there on the screen , and your actors do n't dog it .
and i know that , maybe , with u - turn , you were just kicking back , just having fun .
that 's fine .
but do n't do that with a movie with the potential of this one .
do some police academy sequel
( imagine that .
) do a big comedy , like a remake of it 's a mad , mad , mad , mad world .
but do not drop a limp u - turn out of your pocket and expect us to accept it as " an oliver stone movie , " and not question why it stinks like week - old snook
.
there 's a right way to have fun , and a wrong way to have fun .
this was as wrong as you can get without going to jail .
this was as wrong as you can get one of the most pointless and worthless films of the decade tilt - o - whirl point of this loser film a group toe - stub this mess of a film blatantly copping these ideas this is dang near as unforgivable as any movie it stinks like week - old snook