“Get Shorty” (1995)
Not so much ripping off “Pulp Fiction” as betting heavily on its success (it was one of John Travolta‘s first post-comeback bookings, producers Jersey Films having partly backed ‘Pulp’ and having the inside track), “Get Shorty” also turned out to be one of the very best of the wave of comic crime pictures that came in the years after Tarantino’s game-changer, in part because it directly adapted one of the director’s favorites, Elmore Leonard. Scripted by Scott Frank and helmed by Barry Sonnenfeld, the film sees Travolta play Chili Palmer, a Miami loan shark who pursues Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman), a B-movie producer, only to end up entering the business by pitching a movie based on his life. They set out to land A-lister Martin Weir (Danny DeVito, who also produced), even as Chili woos Weir’s ex-wife (Rene Russo) and fends off both a local drug dealer (Delroy Lindo) and his boss from home (Dennis Farina). It’s convoluted stuff with multiple players, just like all of Leonard’s best work, but Frank’s smart, snappy screenplay manages to make it all comprehensible, and Sonnenfeld’s zippy, career-best direction keeps proceedings light on their feet. Plus the cast are all aces: not just the starry ensemble (with Travolta arguably even better here than in ‘Fiction’), but also the stacked supporting cast that includes James Gandolfini, Jon Gries and, in an unbilled cameo, Bette Midler. Shame about the sequel, though… [B+]
“Be Cool” (2005)
“Get Shorty” was one of the best of the “Pulp Fiction” follow-ups, and, as we wrote a year or so ago, one of the best-ever Elmore Leonard adaptations. Its dismal, decade-later sequel “Be Cool” was one of the worst of both categories. In fairness, “The Negotiator” helmer F. Gary Gray didn’t have one of Leonard’s best books to work with, but the source material is masterful when compared to the tone-deaf, pleasure-free mess that ended up on screen in 2005. Chilli Palmer is now an established movie name who takes a left turn into the record business when a friend (James Woods) is gunned down in front of him by the Russian mob, and the widow (Uma Thurman) asks him to help save his label by signing a hotly-tipped new singer (Christina Milian), even though she’s already been bagged by two scumbag execs from across town (Harvey Keitel and Vince Vaughn). “Get Shorty” was hardly an inside-Hollywood expose, but felt authentic in a heightened away, whereas no-one involved here seems to have ever even thought about the music industry, and in place of the earlier film’s cast of ringers, we have the wooden Milian, Cedric The Entertainer and, in a performance that remains the lowest ebb of his career (really saying something), Vaughn. Worse, Travolta and Thurman seem to have lost their “Pulp Fiction”-era chemistry, which is only exposed further by the way the film re-enacts their famous dance sequence, but scored to the Black Eyed Peas. That serves as a pretty good metaphor for the movie in general, to be honest. The only redeeming factor is a fine performance from Dwayne Johnson as a gay Samoan bodyguard, but it’s still not enough to make this worth sitting through. [F]
