It’s a cinch to see why actors like Ray Liotta, Forest Whitaker and Jessica Biel signed up for the gritty drama “Powder Blue,” out this week on DVD. The film lets them wallow in bleak, bleary-eyed scenarios, the sort of heightened reality that acting school monologues are made of.
It’s even easier to see why “Blue” shot straight to DVD.
The film goes the “Crash” route, a trail that, more often than not, gets most screenwriters hopelessly lost. Jessica Biel famously sheds her top to play Rose, a single mother and stripper who goes by the name Scarlett on stage. What, Rose wasn’t strippery enough?
Her son is in a coma and it’s all she can do to make ends meet while keeping her cretinous boss (Patrick Swayze, enlivening a very silly role) at arm’s length. She’s less wary of Jack (Ray Liotta), a new strip club customer who doesn’t seem very interested in watching her doff her clothes. We also meet Charlie (Forest Whitaker) a man whose personal grief has left him suicidal. Charlie meets un-cute with a waitress (Lisa Kudrow), but he’s too numb to respond to her advances. He doesn’t need a Friend. He needs a shrink – or a more fully realized character to play.
Finally, there’s Qwerty Doolittle (Eddie Redmayne), and no, that’s not a typo. He works in a funeral home and has trouble with the ladies. Naturally, the characters’ lives intersect in dramatically draining ways while the steroid-enhanced soundtrack strains to make us care.
To be fair, Biel’s performance here should send a flare up to other filmmakers that she’s more than just a pretty face … and legs … and fill-in-the-blank. She’s a stripper with a heart of gold until someone looks at her cross, but she gives the film its most fully dimensional performance.
Writer/director Timothy Linh Buih has ambition to burn, dabbling in dream-like sequences and a dollop of magic realism. But he doesn’t have the chops to pull it off. The characters feel emotionally malnourished, and the final 20 minutes finds each bonding in ways that strain credulity.
Biel’s eagerly awaited Mr. Skin moment wasn’t enough to earn “Powder Blue” a theatrical release, and the film’s convoluted dramatics ensured its path to DVD.
Christian Toto is a contributing reporter for The Washington Times, MovieMaker Magazine and boxoffice.com. He blogs about film at whatwouldtotowatch.com