by JB
My Netflix queue is backed up at least two years. Sometimes this means I'm surprised by movies I forgot I was interested in. Other times it means they send me a movie I just watched on cable the week before. This week's selection, China Moon, is one of the former. When I saw the title I had the vague fear that it would be animated Asian schoolgirls cavorting in sailor uniforms, but fortunately, it's (according to the sleeve) "Double Indemnity redux." My favorite film and my favorite banned weight loss medication: high praise indeed.
Ah, adultery: it's all fun and games until a cuckold needs killin'. That's when things start to get iffy. Something always goes wrong, and that something is usually the fact that you can't trust dishonest people. Often there's something else: the top of a semi trailer is a lousy place to ditch a murder weapon, for instance. Around here, it would bounce off before the truck even merged into traffic. Additionally, adulterous cops are not great spacklers. Bob Vila would be a lot better at patching up unsightly bullet holes, but he's not a leading man type, unlike Ed Harris ... who's good when he's in his element, as he is here, and even pretty good when he's out of it.
It's tempting to punch little holes in the plots of movies like this, but keep your spackle handy, Mr. Vila: there's no point dwelling on them. Even the great movies have issues. In Double Indemnity, for instance, Fred MacMurray is so much taller than the dead guy that the crutches he throws off the side of the train couldn't be mistaken for the victim's (if you haven't seen Double Indemnity, don't judge it by that sentence ... just see it). I'm the only person I know who's bothered by the crutches thing.
China Moon is a fairly tight little movie. Harris and Madeline Stowe are both good ... the latter is quite stunning; it's not impossible to believe that she could make a smart cop stupid. She's hotter than Barbara Stanwyck, I guess, but she doesn't have half the personality, and the director seems content to let her looks carry the character. Benicio del Toro is quite good as Harris's protege and nemesis.
In addition to the femme fatale and too smart for his own good protagonist, an adultery noir film needs a husband/cuckold who's an asshole. We have to hate the guy. Charles Dance fits the bill, but can we please get past using southern accent to equal oppressive wife-beater?
The other reason I like film noir is the cool, quotable lines ... and Ed Harris bellowing "I was loving you, and you were fucking me" is just about perfect, even if it's not listed as a memorable quote on imdb.com. That's a line that's going to come in handy again and again!