Wonderland (2003)

Wonderful character development!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Every reality hangs in the balance.Issues with intelligence Agencies...Celebrities... Meet People:good & evil...WONDERLAND IS THE BOMB! Adventure,experience that it is intrigue and that it are bound by action and it seems the more questions you have the more answers that you have understood...good and evil trapped in a historical fiction wrapped around the absurd stuffed in a "film"..

This film explores a rough slice drawn from the life of notorious porn star John Holmes (aka Johnny Wadd). It strongly hints at his involvement with the July 1, 1981 brutal slayings that took place on Wonderland Avenue, one of the many side streets off Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles. Laurel Canyon is well known for its twists and turns, hidden crevices and offbeat landscape suggesting the strange and bizarre.The story is told from two points of view: Holmes' (Val Kilmer) and David Lind's (Dylan McDermott)-Holmes' dealer. Since Holmes refused to name names, what really went down in that apartment that night will never precisely be known, but this film makes a convincing case as to what happened. A top crime boss gets robbed and is out for revenge.Kilmer's performance etches Holmes into our consciousness as a man who is wallowing in the pit of what was once his claim-to-fame, the man with the 14-inch cock. Now driven by an insatiable out-of-control coke habit, he will stoop to anything to stoke it, including debasing himself and his teenybopper girlfriend, Dawn Schiller (Kate Bosworth), whom he sets up to screw Eddie Nash (Eric Bogosian), the kingpin drug lord and the man who reputedly ordered the Wonderland murders.Holmes' nonstop motor mouth will say what is needed and promise what is needed as long as he can satisfy his craving. In addition to Kilmer's performance, the cinematography―with its speeding up of some of the frames―captures the frantic pace of someone living in that world―or to be more precise: allowing that world to live him. His coke habit constrained him to execute certain behaviors that he had no more control over than an automaton.I can't unequivocally endorse this movie since gory murders and drug-fueled parties (convincingly done) aren't everyone's cup of tea. But for what it intends, namely, to show the drug-fueled frantic mania of late '70s/early '80s LA with its anything-goes attitude, it's first-rate.It's a travesty of justice that the real villain of the whole affair―so insidious and powerful that the LA police were hesitant to touch him―got away literally with murder. But LA seems to be famous for that sort of thing.7/10PS Holmes died on March 13, 1988 as a result of AIDS.

There are so many lurid, crazy, and interesting subjects injected into this movie that it carries you along, despite itself. It is muddled and energy driven and it fails to become totally absorbing. The real-life murders were bizarre and bloody, there's the "attraction" of an involved semi-celebrity, and it is all awash in sex and drugs. This is the type of tabloid tale that it is a guilty pleasure. It has a "Gong Show", and "American Idol" attraction, with a helping of "Unsolved Mysteries".But here we have all this sizzle, and the steak is a tough swallow. There seems to be a confusion of concept going on here. It is too much "MTV" and not enough "Law and Order". The cast yells and screams and are hyper-kinetic and zip around like a crazed experiment in an actor's workshop. The color and tone of this misfire is again, attractive so to speak, but is used to the saturation point and does nothing more than give the proceedings a "post-groovy" appeal.The movie, with no lack of style, is lacking in all that it inspires to interpret. The heinous murders, the drug taking/dealing lifestyle, the decadence, the celebrity cum bum, the "horror" of it all. In the end it is a cheap high, and the crash afterward is not at all pleasant.

I rated this movie a seven, and was almost going to give it an eight. I really like movies like these. Straight up action / thrillers that are believable with good acting, interesting characters put in interesting situations with a plot that keeps you glued to the screen until the end. All very good stuff.This was not the most original story in the world; we've all seen drug related robbery / murder films before. But it was a very fun script and it was executed very nicely. I really liked the robbery scene. It is still a very memorable one for me. This is not a movie to be ranked among the top of someone's very top movies list, but it's definitely a good one and one that I would love to watch again someday.