John Gray
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Filmography
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Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
Directed by Drew Goddard
influenced by Helter Skelter (2004)
Themes
Add Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter and Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (still in the production pipeline) to the list of samplings.
Ah, but remember: This is a film named after one of the Beatles’ most melancholy of ballads, not “Helter Skelter.”
It starts like Helter Skelter and ends like The Long and Winding Road in a lachrymose pool of Richard Curtis cuteness but it never loses its surreal heart and sense of absurdity.
Think of the early to late-1990s/early-aughts heyday of such cop-saviour fantasies as Kiss the Girls, The Glimmer Man, The Watcher, Washington’s own The Bone Collector and Fallen, or Se7en (but without David Fincher’s nihilistic themes and uncompromising aesthetic).
The adaptation here by Kevin Brodbin (The Glimmer Man and the still unreleased Renny Harlin vehicle, Mindhunters) and Frank A. Cappello (Suburban Commando) is the worst kind of amateur hour; in love with its big words and seemingly bigger ideas but without the benefit of a clear-cut storyline and involving characters.
To believe that a director of Britney Spears music videos (Francis Lawrence, a feature first-timer) and a writer of Steven Seagal movies (Kevin Brodbin, author of 1996's The Glimmer Man) would wrest meaningful coherence from so sprawling a text was too much to hope for.