Comwayon
A Disappointing Continuation
Huievest
Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
Sameer Callahan
It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
Jerrie
It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...
lucyganeva
An excellent movie ! All we want to watch more like this one .
NateWatchesCoolMovies
Oliver Stone's brutal, sweaty, trashy, delicious desert set film noir is a treat, and after Natural Born Killers, his finest work. It's an underrated, demented trip into a one horse Arizona town populated by all kinds of freaks, low life's and unstable weirdos. Sean Penn plays a skeezy, self centred deadbeat whose car breaks down in this sun drenched hellhole, and throughout the film gets thrown through a wringer of unpleasantness, violence, deceit and greed. This is not a feel good film. It's a down n' dirty Southern American redneck nightmare fable as only the manic Stone can deliver, and he weaves a gritty yarn that will burn itself into your senses with its raw belligerence and scuzzy characters. Jennifer Lopez is a sexy, sultry wonder as a dangerous femme fatale who ensnares Penn's character. Nick Nolte is her monstrous husband, and relishes the role with a gravelly drawl and a morally bankrupt smirk. Powers Boothe as the deranged town sheriff and Joaquin Phoenix as an even more deranged local boy are excellent. Billy Bob Thornton in an u recognizable getup almost walks off with the film as the worlds weirdest car mechanic, and Jon Voight gives more humanity to his crazy old Indian role than it deserves. The score by Ennio Morricone is a haunting, eerie desert melody, and the jumpy, booze and sun soaked cinematography is a orange hued feast for the eyes. I consider this to be one of the most overlooked films of the 90's. It's not for everyone, but those who enjoy a dark, cynical underside of rural Americana and a good old fashioned, brutally violent neo noir will get a kick out of it. I still do every time I watch it.
Desertman84
Oliver Stone directs this John Ridley screenplay entitled U Turn,which is adapted from Ridley's novel Stray Dogs.It features Sean Penn,Nick Nolte and Jennifer Lopez together with Joaquin Phoenix,Powers Boothe,Billy Bob Thornton,Claire Danes and Jon Voight.This film is a Southwestern noir tale about Bobby Cooper, a hotshot who is stuck in the tight confines of Superior, Arizona, when his car breaks down. His subsequent adventure is a meatball comedy which is loud, obnoxious, and violent, and stuffed with diffused light, a hot cast, and a no-fat Ennio Morricone score.A drifter eludes Las Vegas collection agents and arrives in a small town where he decides to linger after his car has a breakdown. Here he gets involved with the locals, including an unhappily married couple - a businessman and his seductive, femme-fatale wife. A trailer trash teen also approaches him in an effort to get away from her abusive boyfriend. Tensions in the town escalate, eventually leading to murder.The first 40 minutes or so are "fun" to a point. Penn is the perfect near-creep to root for, and as he wanders back into town after meeting Grace, the eclectic characters pile up. But soon it gets monotonous, tiring, and just plain ugly. And when incest and bloody fights begin, the fun is gone. If Penn weren't so solid an actor and able to be empathetic in the most morose situations, the movie would be not watchable at stretches. Lopez makes another good impression, but this is not a performance that stands out.While,Nolte is raspy and ill-looking. Before U Turn is over, you are already wondering if Oliver Stone will do something else, something more important, soon.Overall,it is a long and strange trip of a movie that is fun but aimless.
seymourblack-1
"U Turn" is often over the top, surreal and comical and Oliver Stone's style of direction plays along with these qualities perfectly. In everything he does, he favours excess over subtlety and utilises a variety of quick and often disconcerting visual techniques to create the hallucinogenic backdrop against which this twisted drama is played out. A collection of highly eccentric characters and some extraordinary performances from a star-studded cast also adds greatly to the enjoyment of watching this interesting treatment of a standard film noir plot (which bears a strong resemblance to "Red Rock West").Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn)is a drifter who's driving to Las Vegas to pay off some gambling debts when his car's radiator hose blows and he has to make a detour to the town of Superior, Arizona to get a replacement fitted. Whilst his car is being repaired, Bobby goes into the town centre and almost straightaway, meets Grace McKenna (Jennifer Lopez). She's an attractive woman who needs assistance to carry some newly purchased drapes back to her home and Bobby is pleased to help. They start to get friendly and just as Bobby has his arms around her, Grace's husband Jake (Nick Nolte), arrives and punches Bobby to the ground.A little while later, after Bobby's left Grace's house, Jake offers him a significant amount of money to kill his wife because he's tired of her games. Bobby doesn't show any interest in the offer at that time but does later, after he loses all his money in strange circumstances after unintentionally getting caught up in a convenience store robbery. Before Bobby can go ahead with the planned murder, Grace persuades him to kill Jake so that they can steal her husband's money and go away together. They go ahead with their plan but a series of complications follow and eventually lead to a very tense and unpredictable end to the story.Bobby Cooper is a typical noir protagonist who suffers a misfortune that leads to a whole series of other problems, which all inevitably become more serious and dangerous than the last. This ex-tennis player with a gambling problem had already had two fingers cut off by the gangsters to whom he owed money before he arrived in Superior and the bad luck he suffered when his car broke down was exploited by the unscrupulous mechanic at the local garage who kept raising the cost of the job and threatening Bobby in various ways. Bobby's attraction to Grace got him caught up in a web of lust, murder and treachery and random misfortunes led to him losing his money and becoming trapped in this desert town with no means of escape. His awful predicament is then made even worse by his certain knowledge that the gangsters who want their money back know where he is and are coming to get him.Sean Penn is wonderfully intense and conveys his character's sheer desperation with immense power and conviction. There are also, however, very memorable performances by the rest of the cast who all look as if they're having a lot of fun in their roles as some of the most weird and devious people imaginable.Billy Bob Thornton stands out as the malevolent mechanic with a disgusting appearance and Nick Nolte is suitably gruff and repulsive as a man with an appalling past and no morals. Jon Voight makes a big impression as an allegedly blind Vietnam veteran who's a beggar with a penchant for making philosophical pronouncements and Jennifer Lopez is very good as the femme fatale.This neo-noir account of one man's nightmare contains so many elements that are recognisable from other film noirs that it ultimately becomes a glorious pastiche in which its many moments of dark humour act as a marvellous counterpoint to all the evil and violence that are prevalent throughout the whole story.