Holden Pike
05-14-03, 06:45 AM
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City of Ghosts
Matt Dillon stars as Jimmy, an American con artist fleeing legal troubles who heads for the far east, Cambodia specifically. This is modern day post-Pol Pot Cambodia, a country still looking for an identity, drowning in poverty and corruption. There Jimmy encounters a number of seedy expatriots and scumbags, including Stellan Skarsgard (Insomnia, Breaking the Waves, Ronin) as a fellow con, Gerard Depardieu (1900, The Return of Martin Guerre, Camille Claudel) as a hotel owner, James Caan (The Godfather, Thief, Misery) as the elder con king and Jimmy's mentor who's in a kind of retirement/hiding in the jungle, ex-military flexing their muscle for the highest bidder, and various pickpockets, pimps and whores. The only two seemingly good people Jimmy encounters are a local rickshaw driver, Sok, played by a Cambodian non-actor named Kem Sereyvuth, and an idealistic young woman, Natascha McElhone (The Truman Show, Love's Labour's Lost, Solaris) who is in the country helping to restore temples and monuments damaged by years of war and neglect.
Dillon is quite strong in the lead, his rumpled, unshaven pretty boy looks are the perfect vehicle for Jimmy, a man looking for a way out of the swindling life he has chosen. Caan does his thing, and is cast just right as the father-figure of a crook (could well be his character from The Gambler twenty years later), a man with grandiose dreams and ambitious that are obviously out of his corrupt reach. Depardieu gets the best comic relief bits, as the rotund Frenchman who runs his hotel and bar with a cynical smile, a stick and a gun, with a thieving monkey for a mascot. McElhone, fast becoming one of my favorite actresses, has the sketchiest role on paper, but makes the most of it, infusing her vibrant energy and humanity into the functional part of the pretty good girl in a world full of corruption. And Sereyvuth is fantastic, giving a very low key natural performance that becomes quite central to the movie by the third act.
The plot is a fairly standard crime narrative, with double and triple crosses, shifting allegiances and a redemptive love. It's all well done if straightforward, but the plotting here really takes a backseat to the atmosphere, the performances and the themes. City of Ghosts is the first western film shot primarily in Cambodia since the 1950s. After Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge and its horrible reign of terror began in the mid-70s, all movies about Cambodia - including Roland Joffe's seminal The Killing Fields (1984), had to be shot in neighboring Thailand or the Phillipeans. Now with Pot's death (in 1998), the country is finally open again, and trying desperately to find its way. Like Wim Wenders' documentary The Beuna Vista Social Club (1999) which gave a glimpse of the real street-level Cuba closed off from view for decades, City of Ghosts is maybe more than anything else a fascinating document of the current conditions in Cambodia. In one of my favorite lines, after James Caan's character is told the faded palace he lives in needs a coat of paint, he retorts "The whole counrty needs a coat of paint." Indeed.
City of Ghosts plays like Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) by way of Saint Jack (1979) and The Quiet American (2002). Matt Dillon not only stars in the film, but also makes his feature directorial debut. It's a strong effort. I'd take a few tiny points off for some cliched dream imagery that doesn't really work and is unnecessary, but thankfully these moments are brief and disposable. Otherwise, Dillon hits the highlights of the convoluted genre plot when he has to, but always allows the characters and the setting to come to the fore and make the movie what it is: a hypnotic journey. The script is by Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart, Lost Highway) and Dillon. Jim Denault's beautiful cinematography and Tyler Bates's effective score add much to the dream/nightmare atmosphere. It all has the feel of some of the great films of the '70s, a loving monument to the likes of Antonioni's The Passenger (1975), Cassavetes' The Killing of a Cihinese Bookie (1976) and Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens (1972).
Grade: B+
http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Ss/0164003/CG-77.jpg
City of Ghosts
Matt Dillon stars as Jimmy, an American con artist fleeing legal troubles who heads for the far east, Cambodia specifically. This is modern day post-Pol Pot Cambodia, a country still looking for an identity, drowning in poverty and corruption. There Jimmy encounters a number of seedy expatriots and scumbags, including Stellan Skarsgard (Insomnia, Breaking the Waves, Ronin) as a fellow con, Gerard Depardieu (1900, The Return of Martin Guerre, Camille Claudel) as a hotel owner, James Caan (The Godfather, Thief, Misery) as the elder con king and Jimmy's mentor who's in a kind of retirement/hiding in the jungle, ex-military flexing their muscle for the highest bidder, and various pickpockets, pimps and whores. The only two seemingly good people Jimmy encounters are a local rickshaw driver, Sok, played by a Cambodian non-actor named Kem Sereyvuth, and an idealistic young woman, Natascha McElhone (The Truman Show, Love's Labour's Lost, Solaris) who is in the country helping to restore temples and monuments damaged by years of war and neglect.
Dillon is quite strong in the lead, his rumpled, unshaven pretty boy looks are the perfect vehicle for Jimmy, a man looking for a way out of the swindling life he has chosen. Caan does his thing, and is cast just right as the father-figure of a crook (could well be his character from The Gambler twenty years later), a man with grandiose dreams and ambitious that are obviously out of his corrupt reach. Depardieu gets the best comic relief bits, as the rotund Frenchman who runs his hotel and bar with a cynical smile, a stick and a gun, with a thieving monkey for a mascot. McElhone, fast becoming one of my favorite actresses, has the sketchiest role on paper, but makes the most of it, infusing her vibrant energy and humanity into the functional part of the pretty good girl in a world full of corruption. And Sereyvuth is fantastic, giving a very low key natural performance that becomes quite central to the movie by the third act.
The plot is a fairly standard crime narrative, with double and triple crosses, shifting allegiances and a redemptive love. It's all well done if straightforward, but the plotting here really takes a backseat to the atmosphere, the performances and the themes. City of Ghosts is the first western film shot primarily in Cambodia since the 1950s. After Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge and its horrible reign of terror began in the mid-70s, all movies about Cambodia - including Roland Joffe's seminal The Killing Fields (1984), had to be shot in neighboring Thailand or the Phillipeans. Now with Pot's death (in 1998), the country is finally open again, and trying desperately to find its way. Like Wim Wenders' documentary The Beuna Vista Social Club (1999) which gave a glimpse of the real street-level Cuba closed off from view for decades, City of Ghosts is maybe more than anything else a fascinating document of the current conditions in Cambodia. In one of my favorite lines, after James Caan's character is told the faded palace he lives in needs a coat of paint, he retorts "The whole counrty needs a coat of paint." Indeed.
City of Ghosts plays like Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) by way of Saint Jack (1979) and The Quiet American (2002). Matt Dillon not only stars in the film, but also makes his feature directorial debut. It's a strong effort. I'd take a few tiny points off for some cliched dream imagery that doesn't really work and is unnecessary, but thankfully these moments are brief and disposable. Otherwise, Dillon hits the highlights of the convoluted genre plot when he has to, but always allows the characters and the setting to come to the fore and make the movie what it is: a hypnotic journey. The script is by Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart, Lost Highway) and Dillon. Jim Denault's beautiful cinematography and Tyler Bates's effective score add much to the dream/nightmare atmosphere. It all has the feel of some of the great films of the '70s, a loving monument to the likes of Antonioni's The Passenger (1975), Cassavetes' The Killing of a Cihinese Bookie (1976) and Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens (1972).
Grade: B+
http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Ss/0164003/CG-77.jpg