All the movie is really missing is a zydeco band and a mess of rice and beans. The former cop is Dave Robicheaux (Alec Baldwin), who retired from the force after a couple of guys got killed. Now he runs a bait shop and charter service with his wife (Kelly Lynch), the furniture stripper. Bubba Rocque (I like the spelling of the last name) went to high school with Dave, which qualifies Dave to say, with fierce conviction, the immortal line “I know Bubba Rocque!” Bubba is the kind of guy who has a boxing ring set up on the lawn of his plantation, so he can go a couple of rounds before cocktails. Bubba's wife (Teri Hatcher) meanwhile stands naked on the balcony, boldly challenging Dave to go where no man has gone before, except for every other man in the parish.
So venomous is the atmosphere of evil in this movie that it permeates everything, which is the only way to account for Mary Stuart Masterson (the shining light of “Fried Green Tomatoes” and “Benny & Joon”) as the stripper. To be sure, she has a heart of gold, but then strippers, on the average, are always just about the nicest people in the movies where they appear.
Everyone works very hard in this movie, and at a certain level it is possible to appreciate the simple craft and gusto that went into it. As Bubba, Eric Roberts is a splendid and complex villain, with his corn-rowed hair, his lazy drawl, and his wife as his cross to bear in life. Alec Baldwin is cool, earnest and menacing as the hero, although I have seen him on the stage in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and feel he will agree this is not his best work. The photography by Harris Savides strikes a nice balance between the humid and the tumid, and Phil Joanou (“State of Grace,” “Final Analysis”) is tireless in his determination to get through four hours of material in two hours and 12 minutes flat.
But the material is so absurd that when the characters try to become believable, they only cast it in stark relief. Somehow a movie like this demands worse acting. It's unsettling when the actors know the back-stories of their characters better than the audience knows the front-stories.
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