Thursday (1998)

You won't be disappointed!

Thanks for the memories!

Overrated and overhyped

Absolutely the worst movie.

Thursday is one of the great forgotten neo-noir comedies of the 90's, floating on the wake of everything from Tarantino to Verhoeven. It's almost impossible to find these days (I watched an old youtube version years ago), but worth hunting down for its vehement hedonism, mean spirited dark humour and cast members who take a walk down the dark end of the street, and clearly have fun with the shamelessly disgusting material. There's a spirited willingness to be nasty, a bottom feeding urban sleaziness that almost reminded me of Wayne Kramer's Running Scared, or Joe Carnahan's Stretch. Thomas Jane, riding the wave of a supporting role in Face/Off, plays Casey, an ex drug dealer trying to go straight and adopt a child with his wife (Paula Mitchell). Suddenly his old buddy Nick (a ferocious Aaron Eckhart) blows back into his life with big ideas and an even bigger amount of heroin he stole from god knows where. This sets off a wild and exceedingly weird chain of events including convenience store robbery, murder, a psycho named Billy (James LeGros) with a penchant for elaborate torture, a kinky femme fatale (Paulina Porizkova) and a scary rogue cop (Mickey Rourke). It's a big bloody hot mess, but a brilliant one that nails the feverish tone of stuff like Natural Born Killers, a complete disregard for discretion or moderation, tossing everyone and everything into the fire until the audience feels like they need a big collective shower. Eckhart is a treat to watch, taunting the laid back Jane with a knowing glee, waiting for that inevitable revert to bis old, crazy self. Rourke is relegated to what is essentially an extended cameo, but he makes the most of it with quiet tension and the menace of a junkyard dog. This film has what is probably the weirdest sex scene I've seen, which the youtube version won't show (being the sicko that I am, I had to track it down elsewhere). Brutally reckless stuff, and a howl if this is your type of thing. Watch for a brief and hilarious cameo from Michael Jeter.

This movie clearly must have started as a stage play as most of the action takes place in the living room and dining room of the lead character's house and this stilted, suffocating, and labored event will leave you regretting that 90 minutes of your life has passed watching this thing, waiting for something to take away.When architect Casey (Thomas Jane) gets a call from an old friend one Thursday morning for a visit he accepts with some apprehension. Their friendship, based on drug dealing and killing, ended some four years earlier and Casey was not eager to be reminded of those days as he has sufficiently created a legitimate life for himself and his wife. When Nick (Aaron Eckhart) arrives he borrows Casey's car and leaves his luggage as he runs off to a "business" meeting. When Casey discovers a suitcase full of drugs he flushes them down the drain but when a Rastafarian hit man arrives looking for the drugs Casey finds his problems have just begun. Later when Nick's partners porn actress Dallas (Paulina Porizkova) and sadist Billy Hill (James LeGros) arrive looking for two million dollars that Nick has squirreled away Casey finds himself in a situation where he must out-wit gangsters, cops, and hit men in order to escape with his life.With the acting talents of Paulina Porizkova on display as well as her naked body one can understand how her acting career skyrocketed right to the bottom. The woman can't act, and why the filmmakers thought that a view of her scrawny naked body would entice an audience to this cinematic mess is unfathomable. She delivers lines as if she's sucking the air out of the room, without one hint of sub-textual consideration.With the even-lighted sets we can assume that the film is intended as a comic take on the gangster film, but the jokes are so pushed and overplayed, and scenes so pointless that you wonder how these people can get up and dress themselves in the morning. There is no one in this film we can care about, and this is the fatal flaw of the movie.Writer/Director Skip Woods must have thought that his witty dialogue was so good that simple scenes could be set up and played out for the best effect. This kind of filmmaking went out with His Girl Friday, and the revolutionary dominance of the Actors Studio over film acting. The lines aren't funny, but then the actors aren't comic actors either, and this confusion is what drags the movie down to a mind-numbing series of claustrophobic set-ups with Casey at the center.Thomas Jane is a fine actor, and his scene with the excellent Aaron Eckhart are dynamic, but Jane isn't a comedian. Moreover he is up against an impossible task of taking his character Casey and showing how he redeems himself after killing someone in a previous career. There is very little any actor can do to get us to like him after showing that he is a murderer, and Jane, as sincerely as he tries, cannot pull this off.Eckhart on the other hand makes the movie humorous and quirky from his first appearance in the movie. Eckhart can sufficiently act with his eyebrows and makes us interested in his character regardless of the thoughtless mayhem he and his cronies create in the opening scene of the film. We feel from this appearance that his character is the main one we should follow, but after Eckhart disappears from the picture for most of the important scenes, we are left with a sense of being cheated.The one-day action arc in the narrative makes it a classic story, but the isolated set of Casey's house make this much better suited to an off-Broadway play, and the tainted tone of the story moving from serious to comic would play better for stage actors.

This movie is excellent. Not because it does anything special or new, but because it is consistently great in all of its parts. No part stands out as being "ground-breaking" or "stellar", but all parts are far above mediocre, and that makes, to me, an excellent movie.I own several copies of this movie, and may acquire it on collectors DVD or Blu-Ray, someday (holding off right now due to high blu-ray prices, and of course the face that I don't have a blu-ray player... but that's beside the point of this review).It stars off sort of ordinary, but quickly turns into a drama filled with tension, some action, strongly portrayed characters, and a well though out plot which keeps you interested until the very end.Wait, no, it does NOT start out ordinary.It starts out sort of like what a Qun. Tar. movie WISHES it could be. With an awesome scene where an attempt to buy coffee and a donuts goes... very, very wrong.By the end of the movie, nothing was as it seemed, and a few people are dead, and a few people are very rich. I won't tell you who... watch and enjoy! Overall rating: 10/10, A**, Excellent!

That the director could put so many things in such a short flick (about 80 min) is a feat in itself .There's never a dull moment indeed.Divided into 'chapters" ,it features one of the most extraordinary gallery of weirdos you can see on a screen.My favorite is Dr Jarvis ("you seem so nervous") cause he is NOT the character you are expecting in this kind of gory thriller(and Skip Woods tells all the gory details).All the actors overact ,their gesticulations make them almost look like cartoon characters ,all are much fun to watch .Many fine lines of black humor .And,ding dong,who's knocking again? Mickey Rourke,no less!This movie is completely off the wall and that's fine with me!What 's the point of using a frying pan when you've got a gun?