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It seems that Tarantino has a lot to answer for. A mismanaged
heist sprinkled with some black humour and punctuated with a sharp
selection of music is an all-too-familiar film these days. Many
get it wrong. With his feature film debut, Things to Do in
Denver When You're Dead, Gary Fleder improves on the great
pretender himself. While Tarantino's characters add up to no more
than the sum of their caricature parts, Fleder's actually feel
like real people - hell, they even fall in love.
The film's hero is former gangster Jimmy the Saint (a silver-tongued
Andy Garcia). Jimmy now lives the quiet life in Denver running
a respectable - if somewhat bizarre - video service recording
parting words of advice from the soon-to-be-deceased. In order
to pay back a debt he agrees to do one last job for a psychopathic
Mafia don (Christopher Walken) and, inevitably, things go badly
wrong. Jimmy and his buddies soon find themselves on the wrong
side of their employer and his hitman, a wonderfully deadpan Steve
Buscemi. From this familiar plot, Fleder and his scriptwriter
Scott Rosenberg have created a stylish, witty and beautifully
shot film whose inventive narrative is punctuated with blistering
action sequences. Quentin should be worried.
Reviewed by Monika Maurer
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