It's hard to decipher the motivation behind this attractive but often labored retro-noir potboiler, which in appearance (and appearances are all the film has to offer) falls uncomfortably somewhere in between an homage to and a satire of classic 1940s crime dramas. The characters are all familiar from other Alan Rudolph daydreams: the laconic lone-wolf hero (Kris Kristofferson, as a low-life ex cop); the tough-but-sensible cookie with a kind streak (coffee waitress Geneviève Bujold); and Rudolph regular Keith Carradine as the innocent bystander, chasing success into the gutters of Rain City (a.k.a. Seattle). But the dialogue, mood, and the story itself are self-consciously artificial, owing more to mid 1980s music-video hyperbole than to any Golden Age Hollywood film style, and the plot doesn't so much develop as congeal. Highlights include Carradine's scene-by-scene metamorphosis into something resembling Ziggy Stardust, and a brief but startling moment when a villain is drowned in a parked car filled with water.
Review of Trouble in Mind
Trouble in Mind
(1985)
uneven pulp fiction from an idiosyncratic filmmaker
11 January 2011
Warning: Spoilers