THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 19, 1995 TAG: 9507190025
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
IF STYLE WERE everything, Steven Soderbergh's ``The Underneath'' would be in an Easter Parade all its own. Here, in a show of self-conscious pretension, is a film so obsessed with camera angles, weird color contortions and eccentric mannerisms that it manages to complicate a simple little plot about an armed-car robbery.
There is some morbid interest in just how far this young director will go in his excesses. But beyond that, this is a better example of a muddled movie than it is of a muddled robbery.
Surprisingly, it is a remake (of sorts) of a 1948 Hollywood film noir called ``Criss Cross,'' which was directed by Robert Siodmak and starred Burt Lancaster, Yvonne DeCarlo and Dan Duryea. It is interesting now primarily for the cast and Siodmak's take on the lowlifes.
The new version is done up in wide screen and garish color to the point that the noir is practically lost. Screenwriter Daniel Fuchs has been joined by the director (who, in another of his arty affectations, uses the pseudonym Sam Lowry, which happened to be the character Jonathan Pryce played in ``Brazil'').
Peter Gallagher, a good actor who has always been too handsome to be cast as a real guy, is miscast as an obsessive gambler who is back in town and hopes to be reconciled with his ex-wife. She's taken up with a ruthless nightclub operator and wants no part of him. Gallagher looks too high-class to associate with this seedy lot.
Allison Elliott, as his sexy wife, is about as dangerous-looking as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. As a femme fatale, she's hardly fatale.
More interesting is William Fichtner, who brings some real menace to his role as the possessive small-time crook. When Gallagher is trapped, he suggests an armed-car robbery. He will be the inside man but when things go wrong, everyone gets double-crossed.
This relatively simple narrative is hidden amid multiple flashbacks that are meant to keep the viewer guessing. They're more likely to keep them irritated. A major clue to deciphering it all is that the robbery is photographed in some kind of blue haze and that Gallagher has a beard in most flashback scenes. It all makes you long for saner movies in which flashbacks were signaled by a misty haze around the edge of the screen.
The supporting cast has some surprises. Anjanette Comer, the 1960s starlet who starred with Marlon Brando in ``The Appaloosa'' makes an unlikely comeback as Gallagher's mother. She's been off the screen for decades. Paul Dooley (``Breaking Away'') is her new husband. An almost-unrecognizable Shelley Duvall is a nurse in the movie's most curious, and best, scene. Joe Don Baker is also there - not walking as tall, but still employed.
Soderbergh, a sometimes-resident of Charlottesville, signals that he is a director determined to take risks. This is admirable, but foolhardy when the result is as incomprehensible as this. He was an overnight sensation when his ``sex, lies, and videotape'' won the Cannes Film Festival honors. He faltered with ``Kafka'' and when his unjustly underrated ``King of the Hill'' failed to get an audience. Unfortunately, ``The Underneath,'' while of interest as a curiosity, is not a comeback. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
GRAMERCY PICTURES
Peter Gallagher plays an obsessive gambler who hopes to reconcile
with his ex-wife (Alison Elliot) in ``The Underneath.''
Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``The Underneath''
Cast: Peter Gallagher, Alison Elliott, William Fichtner, Joe Don
Baker, Paul Dooley, Elisabeth Shue, Anjanette Comer, Shelley Duvall
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Screenplay: Sam Lowry and Daniel Fuchs, based on the novel
``Criss Cross'' by Don Tracy
Music: Cliff Martinez
MPAA rating: R (soft-focus bedroom scenes, language)
Mal's rating: Two stars
Locations: Naro Expanded Cinema in Norfolk
by CNB