Review: Breathless (2012)

Gina Gershon is the trailer trash (literally) wife of chubby Val Kilmer. She has just conked him on the head with a frying pan under suspicion that he robbed a bank and has been keeping the money from her. Kelli Giddish plays her equally trashy best friend who arrives on the scene. They tie the unconscious Kilmer to a chair, and hope to get him to spill when he regains consciousness. Unfortunately, one accident with a gun and an exploding head later, and the two women are left none the wiser about the money’s whereabouts. And then the local sheriff (a bloated Ray Liotta) turns up to complicate matters even further.

 

Released on DVD in the US in 2012, but not appearing in Australia until a cable TV showing in late 2014, this blackly comedic crime/thriller is lousy and flimsy. There’s not enough material here for a feature film and it stops dead before it even starts. Don’t let the big names in the cast fool you, a fat and stringy-haired Val Kilmer (who is having fun but has barely a cameo), bloated Ray Liotta, and overly made-up Gina Gershon are far from their best here. Lesser known co-star Kelli Giddish (a veteran of TV’s “All My Children” and “Law & Order: SVU”), meanwhile is just horrendous. She acts like she only got the script about 5 minutes ago.

 

Co-written and directed by Jesse Baget (who made the hilarious-sounding “Wrestlemaniac” with Rey Mysterio Sr. I need to see that one), it’s not remotely funny, it’s not original, and it’s not enough of anything to work at feature length. Worst of all is the opening credits montage that completely rips off “Dexter”, as does the music score by Jermaine Stegall (“B.T.K”, “Blood Out”). The only difference is the choice of meat sizzling. There’s even eggs and blood involved! I mean, that’s just theft right there. The whole thing plays like an episode of “Femme Fatales” without the sex or Tanit Phoenix pretending to be a sexy TV host, and instead everyone acts like the whole thing is a put-on. That’d be fine if there were any laughs, but aside from Gina Gershon and especially Ray Liotta (who is particularly bad here, a rarity) struggling to maintain ill-fitting Southern accents, the humour is sorely lacking. Liotta, by the way, looks fatter than Kilmer, and that takes some doing, believe me. Richard Riehle turns up about 70  minutes in as a deputy sheriff with no introduction whatsoever, and not much to do. At least Kilmer got out early.

 

With so much talk (shouting, really) and 99.99% of the film taking place inside one cramped location, it comes off rather stagey. It also looks like there were no toilets on set because the cinematographer has clearly taken a dump on the camera lens. Brownest film I’ve seen in a long time. No fun at all, this is like “Thelma & Louise” except they don’t go anywhere and there’s lots of blood everywhere that on a tonal level seems out of place. The film needed a strong, artistic vision, a genuinely funny sense of humour, and well-cast actors in order to overcome its static nature, clichés, and flimsy story. It’s nothing and it goes nowhere. Terrible. Baget co-wrote the screenplay with Stefania Moscato. Yes, it took two whole people to write a screenplay that could’ve almost been written on a Post-It note.

 

Rating: D