Shadow Hours (2000)

La trama

Michael Holloway, appena uscito dall'alcolismo e dalla tossicodipendenza, è pronto a cominciare una nuova vita insieme alla moglie Chloe, in attesa di un bambino. Durante il turno di notte come benzinaio in una stazione di servizio di Los Angeles, Stuart Chappell, elegante e misterioso, lo avvicina e lo invita a fare un giro nei locali notturni alla ricerca di 'materiale' per il suo prossimo romanzo. Un viaggio innocente si trasformerà nella discesa agli inferi attraverso i night club clandestini più malfamati della città, con esibizioni dal vivo piuttosto scioccanti. Michael viene messo alla prova da Stuart che lo sfida a toccare il fondo per poter risalire ed è sempre più ossessionato dalle forze oscure alle quali cerca di resistere. "The explicit and raw scenes" referred to in the critic's quote in the newspaper ads for this movie definitely do not refer to anything erotic or sexual. No, sexuality is far to complex and difficult a subject for boy directors, so they always revert to the tried and true--extreme bloody violence. Nice performances by Getty and Weller, but what they had to say was laughable, and overwhelmed by flashy camera work and an ending so outrageous it was almost worth sitting through the dreadful array of sadomasochism scenes to get to the ending which was worth a good laugh at the ineptness on display. Just how far should an audience be required to go to suspend disbelief? The Russian roulette scene would have been laughable itself had it not already been done to death so many times before. Now it's just tired and predictable. Unfortunately boy-wonder auteurs have no life experience on which to base their work so their "films" are nothing more than a collection of scenes recycled from other movies, some better, some worse, but never original. And one last thing, movies about recovering addicts in a 12-step program should have a warning label so that innocent people won't be suckered into seeing yet another movie about some loser trying to clean up. Seen it. Seen it. Seen it.