Tequila Sunrise. - movie reviews

National Review, Feb 24, 1989 by John Simon

PERFORMANCES AND atomosphere are what it's all about in Tequila Sunrise, one of those convoluted thrillers whose plots are a bunch of holes looking for a piece of Swiss cheese to crawl into. Robert Towne, who wrote and directed, doubtless knows all about slick Los Angeles and the craving for cocaine, as well as about who supplies it and how. We have here a triangle involving Kurt Russell as a tough L.A. police lieutenant, narcotics division; Mel Gibson as an old pal of Russell's, a drug pusher trying to go straight; and Michelle Pfeiffer as a canny restaurateur (-euse?) who carries on with both of them but really loves Mel-naturally, since he happens to be Towne's alter ego.

Reviewers have complained about the opacity of the crime plot, which also involves Raul Julia as a Mexican police chief who's not what he seems to be, and J. T. Walsh as a smug fed trying to bust the L.A. cocaine traffickers but mostly getting into Kurt's hair; in this kind of movie it is always the feds who are the real heavies, what with parlor-leftist filmmakers flaunting their bona fides. Rather more opaque, however-not to say thick-are the supposedly sophisticated main characters. When such films were based on the novels of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and their likes, and when the Production Code compelled filmmakers to use subtly suggestive means to convey sex and depravity, the film noir glowed like a black diamond.

Towne, however, despite Shampoo and Chinatown, isn't quite that sophisticated. We get a lot of huffing and puffing from the three stars, and a good deal of fairly explicit sex: welterweight between Russell and Miss Pfeiffer, real heavyweight between Gibson and Miss Pfeiffer. Russell I find rather beefy and boorish; Gibson is more elegant, though still not up to that Gable-Grant-Bogart talent for making catgut dialogue sound like heavenly fiddling. Miss Pfeiffer, with her troublingly irregular upper lip, is nevertheless the best-looking younger star we have, and her acting, though not stellar, is sedulous enough. Even so, Raul Julia, who is not meant to, comes off best.

But there is overindulgence everywhere, as when a longish dramatic exchange between Russell and Gibson is shot by the gifted but pretentious cinematographer Conrad Hall against a sunset achingly dissolving into night, with God and the filter-laden camera vying to put on the kind of light-show that beggars all sound and sense.