Review: Deadfall (1993)

Michael Biehn, his dad James Coburn, and associates Peter Fonda and Michael Constantine are all involved in a drug deal that turns out to be an elaborate con involving Coburn pretending to be dead. Unfortunately, someone fucked up and Coburn really does wind up dead. After this, Fonda suggests Biehn get the hell outta town, and Biehn decides to go and visit the uncle he never knew he even had until now. Said uncle is also played by James Coburn, and it’s not long before Biehn is running scams for Coburn, being set-up by Coburn’s coke-snorting thug Nic Cage, and being seduced by Cage’s moll, Sarah Trigger. Cage isn’t happy to learn that Biehn escapes his plan to have him killed, and is even less happy to find out that he’s bonking Trigger. He flips out a tiny bit. Eventually we get to the big con, involving Coburn, Biehn, creepy Angus Scrimm (who doesn’t get to yell ‘Booooyyyyy!’ at any point, unfortunately), and some diamonds. But nothing is what it seems. Apparently. Along the way, Charlie Sheen plays a pool hustler, Talia Shire is a bartender, whilst Mickey Dolenz and Clarence Williams III play two of Scrimm’s cronies.

 

Sometimes opinions change over time. Some movies get better with repeated viewings. Others are just as bad as they were when you first saw them, possibly even worse. I believed in 1993 that this vanity project/family affair/steaming turd from co-writer/director Christopher Coppola (“Dracula’s Widow”) and debutant co-writer Nick Vallelonga (who went on to write “Brilliant Disguise” and “Choker”) was one of the worst films ever made, and in 2015 that still stands. I believed in 1993 that Nic Cage delivered the worst performance of all-time by a known actor, and in 2015 that still stands (#2? Nic Cage in “Vampire’s Kiss”). Let’s discuss Cage later- and boy will we- because this film would still heartily suck without the director’s brother. I can’t work out whether the film is meant to be a put-on that has been over-pitched, or if it’s a god-awful overblown noir homage. Either way it’s too insufferably boring anyway, despite a whole host of famous faces. Having connections in Hollywood and being Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew don’t mean shit if you have absolutely no talent or aptitude for writing or directing.

 

Aside from being tone deaf, it’s the direction of the actors here that is Coppola’s biggest weakness, and given how much talent is here on paper, it just goes to show how bad he really is. I like Michael Biehn, and I feel really sorry for him here, having been handed the lead role. When a film sucks as badly as this one does, the poor leading man takes about as much of the blame as the director, I’m afraid (His career never really survived, though he was quite good in the disturbing “The Divide”). The hard-boiled narration is on the nose, and Biehn can barely muster up the enthusiasm to deliver it. On the other hand, he and Michael Constantine badly overact the opening scene. It’s easily Biehn’s worst work, he’s overwrought in that scene, and the narration seems to come out of “The Naked Gun!”. As the noir leading lady, Sarah Trigger (who?) is immediately and embarrassingly out of her depth. Charlie Sheen and Talia Shire (the director’s aunt) have one scene each, the latter is pointless as a bartender, proving once again that she never gave a good performance outside of a “Rocky” or “Godfather” movie. Sheen, meanwhile, is mannered as hell in a dopey cameo as a pool player that proves he ain’t no Jackie Gleason. I’ve never liked Peter Fonda as an actor, but he’s especially bad in this. There’s a cute in-joke with Angus Scrimm having a spherical crystal on his desk (“Phantasm”, anyone?), but his metal claw-sporting character belongs in an entirely different, more comic-book oriented movie. Clarence Williams III is lucky enough to barely even appear in the film. The one bright spot in the cast is one of my favourite actors, James Coburn, but even in a dual role he can’t save this thing single-handedly. In fact, even with him the film is still bottom-of-the-barrel, and his mere casting raises red flags in the plot that should’ve been kept better hidden.

 

And now we come to Nic Cage. Holy crap, where do I start? Looking like Tony Clifton, Cage is immediately awful. Is he even trying to give a good performance? He’s being infantile. He reminds me of the end result of Adam Sandler playing Andy Kaufman/Tony Clifton in the title role in a remake of “Scarface”. I’d be shocked if Clifton wasn’t Cage’s chief inspiration here (Followed closely by a mountain of cocaine). He aggressively sinks the film singlehandedly, and that’s without even having to eat a fucking cockroach. He does his brother no favours here by chewing the oxygen. It’s such a stupid and destructively self-absorbed performance that you end up being really angry at the actor for it. I’m not a fan, but I’ll definitely never forgive him for this one.

 

Aside from Coburn (who isn’t exactly memorable), the only thing this film has going for it is the nice, shadowy lighting by cinematographer Maryse Alberti (“Zebrahead”, “Crumb”, “When We Were Kings”, “The Wrestler”), and that ain’t nearly enough, I’m afraid. A badly overdone wannabe noir (the music score is horribly insistent) with all of the actors so appallingly misdirected that none of them seem to be in the same film. But it’s Nic Cage’s horrendously over-the-top, suicidally hammy performance that is this dreadful film’s death knell. There has never been a worse performance before or since by a well-known actor, nor a performance so destructive to a film’s chance of being anything even remotely worthwhile. Or it would’ve been, had this film not sucked anyway. You won’t see too many reviews online of this film, and I can guarantee that almost none of them will be positive. Even “Jumanji” has its fans. But this? Unlikely.

 

Rating: F