People believe they're self-important!-- Jason Statham smashing his skull through a car window. Revolver
Instead
of paying tribute to Ray Liotta by revisiting the seminal Good Fellas, which
takes a significant amount of energy, I selected Revolver, where Jason
Statham undergoes some queer double indemnity; Ray Liotta’s role as D, however,
is essentially the same allegorical switch hitter as in Identity, which
is a year earlier, a much better construct, and perhaps Guy Ritchie should
spend some time in an actual jail cell before he mashes up such a soporific
effort again with such talented players.
I do
not feel the same absence of presence in Liotta’s death that I may have felt
about others, like Peter Falk. I never enjoyed what Liotta projected, most of
the time, that skeevy New Jersey mendacity, not his corrupt cops, not his tough
guys with soft paunch centers of gravity. Not everything about Italian
ethnicity deserves celebration, and his voice peels off like a scab not willing
to heal, although I softened for his support role as the dying father in Powder
Blue, where maudlin is Forest Whitaker’s middle name. It is this fake
death, in LA made snow, with Liotta’s baby blue eyes, against Jessica Biel,
which leaves the man most poignant. It is excessive to suggest a movie like
Powder Blue is a type of precursor to this rotten second decade in which I die,
but sometimes, the fabric of the universe has a malignant tap when we
troublesome creatures push past the envelope, and Powder Blue contains elements
of malevolence embedded therein. Bui exacts a heavy toll on his viewers.
