Phoenix (1998)

Load of rubbish!!

Great Film overall

As Good As It Gets

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Ray Liotta, who produced it too, sure was trying to utilize his success as the lead of (Goodfellas) once. So why not to regain that by another crime movie, especially while no one gave him a starring role in a big movie ever since. The character that he handed over to himself was different and inspiring. That superstitious, lousy gambler, policeman who gambles for gambling, and refuses to be as corrupted as his colleagues could have been something great.. but in another movie. Because with this treatment its beauty lost. He seems special but with nothing there to explore. And his details are interesting but not in interesting conflict. Hence I learned nothing about his reality. But who said anything about exploring, learning and reality in this movie ?!!!!!!! It should have been called (Sex, Violence, and The Gambler Cop). The movie's aim was just entertaining sex and violence all the time WITH NOTHING MORE! Things like the loaner guy and his lisper-too-cartoonish-speech, the unstoppable killings at the heist, Daniel Baldwin surrendering to the police force then LaPaglia killing him in front of them, the twist of the chef of police, or the finale where Liotta killed the loaner and his 2 henchmen... all of that push me to ask which was more laughable ?! Well, I know for a fact that any attempt to describe this movie as a sleeper gem is the unfunny farce!Though, put these pieces together, and you'll find yourself in front of another mindless movie which looks like Hollywood burnished stuff, however resembles in its core any violent "V" crap you have ever seen. So no solace for the good directing I suppose. Actually (Danny Cannon) is so unlucky fine director. This man knows his tools well. He can create a fine atmosphere, a sweaty image, and a charming action. But regarding his career; whether he got bad scripts, or he got a taste for them !I couldn't stand (Anjelica Huston) as the love interest. Aside from being too unattractive for me, there was no existence of even one atom of chemistry between her and (Liotta). Plus being too old beside him as well, unless his character was having unspoken thing for older women (older unattractive ones !). I couldn't understand the King Kong reference also. Was it a hint that Liotta is a man who thinks too much, weighs everything by objective logic while his being as superstitious, taking these very superstitions as logical? Or was it part of the pointless dialog in the crime movies after Pulp Fiction anyway?! Or was it me thinking too much in pointless pulp ??!And to top it all that catchy, so allegedly serious, title; Phoenix !!?? As if the movie was some reading to a whole society !! It represents perfectly this movie's desire to be something it isn't, and it wouldn't. Yet even if; what did it say about the WORLD of that Phoenix ? That all the policemen are decayed. Their boss is more decayed yet smarter. And the solution of crime is another crime. So we live a hell of unmerciful killers and robbers where love and justice are unachieved. It's maybe highly bitter and melancholic reading (that fits a good noir), or just the pure B-movie which drawls with that. The absurd blood rivers in the end answer it frankly. So it's a sad elegy for the world, that needs an elegy itself, for being nothing but unrealistic, totally bloody, and so silly crime movie.In (Chicago) the name worked. In other movies like (Edison) and (Phoenix) it didn't. Stop calling your movies with names of cities to feign a deep point of view and trick some reviewers. Ahhh. The mindless movie that alleges a mind is the worst kind! Finally, if you wanna enjoy, remember : "don't f**k a friend" rule, Liotta's belief in superstitions, LaPaglia beating and killing anybody he doesn't like, and truly.. Brittany Murphy's sexy presence back when her hair was black. Hmmm.. That's about all !

This is one of those films that somehow falls under the radar and languishes undeservedly in obscurity. In a fairly convoluted plot, Ray Liotta plays an honest cop with a gambling addiction who comes up with a plan to rob a loan shark in order to pay off his debts. He enlists the aid of three of his colleagues (Daniel Baldwin, Jeremy Piven and the unappreciated Anthony LaPaglia, who gives a film-stealing performance here) unaware that one is sleeping with another's wife and is under investigation.Although the story unfolds a little too slowly at times, writer Eddie Richey's script has a lot of depth, lending some diversity to a bunch of what could otherwise have been genre-stereotypical tough guys. The quality of the writing is high, with some off-the-wall dialogue and unique insight into such diverse subjects as King Kong, Three-on-a-match, Looney Tunes cartoons, and Dostoyevsky's gambling addiction. Brit director Danny Cannon creates some arresting images (an alternately sun-scorched and rain-sodden Phoenix in monsoon season) and manages to create loads of atmosphere despite often selecting extreme close-ups to emphasise the thoughts and emotions of the characters. There are no weak performances but, together with LaPaglia, the ever-dependable Ray Liotta stands out in the lead role.The ending is probably weaker than it should be because it takes a little too long for all the strands to be neatly tied, but this is still an impressive piece of entertainment that deserves to be better known.

There's just one problem with this movie : it takes place in Arizona yet everyone seems to have a distinctive East Coast accent ... sorry, but most cops in Phoenix don't sound like they're from New Jersey. It seems that every actor in a gritty crime drama is required to have this gruff, Gothamesque 'Prince of the City' voice. (Incidentally, most of the lead actors are from the New York tri-state area ...) Of course, this is a minor flaw. Ray Liotta -- though typecast, unfortunately -- gives an intense, compelling performance as a gambling addict. This isn't his best role, by any means, but he is quite competent as usual. I always enjoy his work and he is undervalued, in my opinion. Still, in general, they could've made this movie a tad truer to the region without losing its edge.

****SPOILERS**** Really off-the-wall movie about police corruption, professional as well as personal, in the Phoenix PD with more double-crosses in the movie then in a cemetery. As your watching the film "Phoenix" your tempted to call your local police precinct and report a crime in progress, the movie, only to put down the phone feeling the police that your calling are the same police in the film.Ray Liotta, Officer Harry Collins, is about the most normal of the bunch of cops focused on in the movie; Officers Mike Henshaw James Nutter Fred Shuster & Let. Clyde Webber, Anthony Lapaglia Daniel Baldwin Jeremy Priven & Xander Berkely. Collins lives by a code that he follows in that being a sick and degenerate gambler he doesn't welsh on a bet that he made, which is the movies main storyline. Collins wants to pay off his lone shark bookie Chicago, Tom Noonan, $32,000.00 that he owes him in betting action and he doesn't want to kill anybody. Which is something that Collins seems to have a lot of trouble keeping from doing in the movie. Besides Chicago there's also Louie,Glancario Esposito, a pimp drug dealer and loan shark, who has Officer Henshaw working for him as a collector and enforcer. Incredibly the cops in "Phoenix" are even worse then the aforementioned gangsters, that's just how bad they are. The police in the movie are made to look so bad that even their boss Let. Webber, Xander Berkley, who at first we see trying to set them up and have them arrested for their crimes is really only interested in ripping them off of their ill gotten gains and keeping them for himself. Collins is always betting in the movie from horses to cards even to cockroaches and raindrops rolling down his car windshield that makes you wonder how he can find time to do his job as a Phoenix policeman? "Phoenix" is so anti-police that it makes you dislike the cops on the screen even if you want to find a reason to like them which it gives you none. Besides being corrupt the cops,Collins Henshaw Nutter &Shuster, are also very stupid as well. They end up wiping themselves out in some of the most ridicules shoot-outs that I've ever seen in a cop movie. There's a rip-off of Louie's joint later in the film to get his weekly, or was it monthly , take of some $250,000.00 that was so funny as well as bloody and brutal that it looked like a scene out of a Marks Brothers comedy. Anjelica Huston & Brittany Murphy as Leila and her daughter Veronica were totally wasted in the film and I have the feeling that they had much bigger parts in the movie but most of their scenes were left on the cutting room floor, lucky for them. Ray Liotta was at his best playing the sick and unstable Officer Collins which seen to be the kinds of roles that he been playing in movies over the last ten years or so. The cops in the movie were co corrupt and horrid in their actions that they made the corrupt cops in the film "Serpico" look like boy scouts stealing cookies from girl scouts. In one real nauseating episode Officer Henshaw has the terrified wife, Sibel Ergener, of Carl, Murphy Dunne, put out for him as her helpless husband is handcuffed to a pipe in their home. The next day Carl kills himself and Henshaw on the scene with Carl's wife present calmly puts his finger to his mouth as if to tell her to shut her mouth about what happened between him and her and Carl if she knows what's good for her. The most sympathetic cop in the movie, next to Collins, Officer Shuster had his wife Katie, Kari Wuhrer,having affairs with almost all the cops in the precinct, except Shuster's partner Collins. Still Shuster thought that Collins was also involved with Katie and sets his partner together with Henshaw and Nutter up to get caught by Let. Webber; who unknown to Shuster is also having an affair with Katie. Let. Webber was only interested in getting the $250,000.00 that the corrupt cops ripped off from Louie and after getting his hands on the cash shot both Shuster who died and Collins who survived and got away. Collins ends the movie by killing Chicago and his mobsters for murdering a witness who Collins refused to kill! Thats because killing is not what Officer Collins is all about! that makes a lot of sense doesn't it? Anjelica Huston in the small part that she had in the movie was about the most positive person in the film. That doesn't say much were everyone in it, the cops and gangsters, were about as sympathetic as Charles "Sweet Charlie" Manson.