Max's old Movies
I titled this like it's an ongoing column. Maybe it will be, but I doubt it.
Anyway, I was just thinking about this movie, which is one of my favorites. Love & a .45 is a crime caper/romantic comedy/ exploitation movie done with an Indie set of aesthetics, and a strong Texas undercurrent. You've got a then-unknown Gil Bellows (later a fixture on Ally McBeal, which I think was "Sex and the City" pre-millenial) and a then-unknown Renee Zellweger ( Oh, come on. Bridget Jones? Tom Cruise co-star? married briefly to a country westetrn singer? Sheesh) as Watty-Watts, and Starlene Cheatham, a pair of starry-eyed star-crossed lovers. See, Watty supports them through petty crime, and gets involved in a bad bit of debt with a loanshark to buy Starlene an engagement ring. So, he agrees to a caper with Billy Mack( Rory Cochrane, the most criminally-underused character actor of all time! even if he is on a CSI franchise), a psychotic meth addict that Watty tried to protect in prison. Unfortunately things get bloody, and our lovers are on the run. Along the way, they meet a rogue's gallery of Texas crazies played by a delicious cast of B movie regulars, like Jeffry Combs, Ann Wedgeworth, Peter Fonda, Jack Nance, and Wiley Wiggins with a great indie-rock soundtrack.
Stylistically, and thematically, it's very similar to the Big-Budget Hollywood gloss of Natural Born Killers, and there's been a debate on which movie ripped off the other (My time in Hollywood has me firmly convinced that it was Oliver Stone ripping off Talkington, and not the other way around) but, unlike most crime capers, and so on, thisone has a soul. in the end the characters choose love over violence, and still grieve for those gone. In other words, they recognize that death is real, and a tragedy, and yet, they choose to live, whereas, in the end, Natural Born Killers destroys everyone's humanity, making death not real, and, therefore, by comparison, love is unreal, as well. What i'm saying is that, while this is still edgy, daring, and independant movie-making, with some shocks and thrills, at the end of it, you don't feel wrong for having watched it. It's a celebration, not a wallowing. Anyway, I like it.
