INTOLERABLE CRUELTY review

INTOLERABLE CRUELTY is like the sardonic creation of Howard Hawks’ evil twin sons! It has all the breathless wit and charm of his classic screwball comedies, but with a level of just vicious wrongness that I found absolutely breathtaking.

Watching some old lady testifying about being made into a sex slave for her pathetic husband, who apparently sexually experimented upon her with devices designed to use spare parts from the vacuum cleaner… well… it made me cry laughing. Then there’s the I.V. Love magazine…. Which is so wonderfully wrong… or all the “I’m Gonna Nail Your Ass” lines… I felt like I was in the room with Ravvy and Quint again!

All this talk about this being a “toned down” Coen Brother film… I’m not sure if I entirely get. The wit and repartee is right on target. The cinematic conventions that they wield and break are as brilliant as ever. The devilish details that they sprinkle are throughout. The Raymond Chandler and Pulp aspirations they so adore are present. Their cruel torturing of their characters is ever-present. Their gifted use of wonderful music is again on display.

To me… the star of the film is Too Mean Levine playing WHEEZY JOE. I mean… not since the brilliant Joe Ranft gave voice to WHEEZY in TOY STORY 2 has there been a character with a respiratory dilemma that warmed my heart or made me care so much. I think, if INTOLERABLE CRUELTY happens to catch on… then Wheezy Joe will become one of the most beloved characters in film history… Right up there with Mike Mazurski’s Moose Malloy!

As for Clooney’s Miles Massey… he’s the fucking Sam Spade of Divorce Attorneys… the Phillip Marlowe of Matrimonial Litany. Only, imagine if Cary Grant had played those Dicks. Only, that’s not entirely accurate… I’m seeing a lot of folks bringing up Cary Grant around Georgie, but that’s the cheap way out… Clooney’s part Groucho Marx here, part Cary Grant and part Ray Milland ala his LOST WEEKEND days. He’s an immaculate mess of confidence and idleness. He’s the sort of guy that can win with every dime and is just bored of the here and there. He’s ho-hum with the day to day and he’s climbed Everest so often he’s carved steps, and there’s no fun going up and down those any more. There’s some of Gable’s Peter Warne here, but also the love sappy yolk of a Mr. Smith. He’s just a delight and a wonder on-screen. There’s a texture of Preston Sturges on this character… that "I’ve been wrong for so long, I’m gonna make an exception, just cuz I can.." type of thing. Whatever, Clooney makes me giggle, in fact Richter would need a new instrument of measurement to capture my ripples from this flick. Clooney had me going throughout. I mean… that look on his face when he visited that guy, who I swear was Sam Jaffe… only that’d mean Sam Jaffe was 112, and while he looked it, I’m told that Sam died back in 1984, so either they did a cg job after scanning his corpse… or … they found someone that bares a resemblance to Jaffe’s corpse… only kinda moving.

Then there’s Catherine Zeta Jones – and she’s got the most luminous skin I’ve seen on screen in quite some time. You just know she’s gotta smell like a peach, though as played, you know it’s got a black pit underneath. She’s bad news… bad news in that classic, oh hell, here comes a determined woman that stirs us like Ovaltine. Her Marylin Rexroth Doyle is just a splendor… There may be no leopard per se in this flick, but she’s definitely got the Simone Simon thing going. Her eyes devour, tempt and taunt. They ask questions that only the sheets can answer. She waltzes with wit and tangos to trouble. She reminds here of Stanwyck, and in particular… she strikes me like Jane Russell did… she might not be the top heavy talent that Jane was, but she has enough curves to make ya want to slow down, cuz you know if you go too fast, you’ll jump a rail and she will laugh at your broken blazing body in the crevice below.

But, ya know what… as great as Wheezy Joe, Miles Massey and Marylin Rexroth Doyle may be… it’s the whole of a Coen cast that collects my coin.

From Rush’s crazed Donovan Donaly laughing while photographing his punctured ass to Cedric the Entertainer’s “I’m Gonna Nail Your Ass” Gus Petch, to Edward Herrmann’s train fetishist, to Billy Boy Thornton’s graduate of Texas A&M Oil retard Howard D Doyle to Julia Duffy’s terrible evil desiccated divorcee to Jonathan Hadary’s hilarious Heinz the Baron Krauss von Espy and on and on… There’s this seemingly endless cast of characters that just kill on screen. I mean, that singing preacher was the scariest thing I’ve seen, till the kilted one.

How anyone could go to this movie and think it is a toned down whitewashed version of a Coen flick, I’m not entirely sure.

All I do know is that it rules, as do all the Coen films. These guys have a knack of just owning every second they command of my time. Again, Roger Deakins is just in a class all his own. While definitely not as overtly showy as say… his THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE or O, BROTHER WHERE ART THOU… I dare say, the way he shot windshields on moving cars in this film were just beautiful. And that’s when you know you’re dealing with a genius… when he can take the ordinarily mundane and bring it to life.

The interesting part is this… Both INTOLERABLE CRUELTY and KILL BILL VOL 1 are covering a very similar subject in both their auteurs' signature fashions. Both films are about the price of love and betrayal and revenge. In a strange way, they’re a perfect double feature – but only if your tastes are wide and a bit on the amoral side. ENJOY…