 Beat (2000) 1. I hate the Beats. Now, had I seen this movie in like 1991, I'd probably have been pleased as punch to see the two come together. But now that I'm "all grown up," I just don't have time to dick around with a bunch of immature assholes trying hard to justify themseleves as artists through extremes of experience. The Beats left behind almost nothing of real greatness, and while their coolness factor remains intact, that is something that appeals mainly to rebellious late-teenagers. Everyone else should leave the shit behind with the dorm refrigerator and the Che Guevara poster upon their final bug-out from campus. Beat retells the tale of William Burroughs (Keifer Sutherland) shooting Joan Vollmer (Courtney Love) in a misguided game of William Tell fueled by contempt and jealousy … on the whole, done a lot better in Naked Lunch but this time told more or less through the eyes of Lucien Carr (Norman Reedus), the minor Beat figure who supposedly introduced the whole posse to each other (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Vollmer). Whatever. It plays like a bad high school drama on every level, and while I wouldn't say it's badly acted (the performances are passable impressions, but not especially deep), the writing and sloooooooooooooooow pace sink it like a bottle of Sominex fed to a baby. As for indie film … I suppose I should recant that statement about hating it, but lately it seems like the real gems are so rare to discover amid the endless fields of steamy buffalo shit. Maybe it was always that way … problem is, you can't go back to wide-eyed wonder once you've acquired good ol' real-world jadedness.
Review by Monghoul |