The legendary Donald Cammell’s final film was, as with seemingly the rest of his limited work, taken away from him by the studios. The original cut lost about twenty minutes and was dumped directly to video. Cammell (Performance and Demon Seed) took his name off the credits. A year later, he committed suicide. It wasn’t for a few more years that his original version was restored. The studio expecting an erotic thriller with a bit of name prestige were obviously terrified by Cammell’s utterly berserk and whacked-out vision, featuring drugged out cinematography and several performances going from over the top into near surrealist territory. As international money launderer Bruno, Christopher Walken has never given a more bizarre performance. Seemingly improvising much of his dialog (which includes repeating several lines in an obsessive manner), wildly gesticulating and completely out of control while feeling organic to the film’s fevered atmosphere, Walken is absolutely magnetic. Sporting a hairstyle resembling Tommy Wiseau’s, Walken’s performance in some ways resembles that of The Room’s auteur if Tommy had genuine acting talent. Walken has a beautiful wife but requires the services of Alex (Anne Heche), a high up in a banking firm who moonlights as an expensive call girl to pay off her massive debt. His chauffeur Tony (Steven Bauer from Scarface) is a scumbag undercover detective who rapes Alex on several occasions. The three leads all give hyper-emotive performances which achieve a mesmerizing high camp. In fact, it’s only Joan Chen as Walken’s wife who doesn’t impress because she holds back. The original cut of Cammell’s film is an unique and madcap crime thriller deserving of a larger cult following.
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