Emma Thompson plays a cool-in-the-face-of-danger F.B.I. agent who teams up with an alcoholic police detective played by Alan Rickman (head terrorist/robber in Die Hard). Based in New Orleans, every character has quirky attributes that have been done before, but in this film, they are more believable.
Even Gil Bellows� character excudes an intellectual sort of menace as he leads a group of 20-something kidnappers. You�ll remember Gil as an attorney from Ally McBeal. Here he wears glasses, practices meditation, and is an all-around smart guy. Like a computer nerd gone bad. Chilling. You don�t want to mess with this guy.
There�s a couple sex scenes between two of the kidnappers, one takes place in a meat locker. El Hombre isn�t into food sex, but this was pretty good. And just like every other movie or television crime show, there�s sexual tension between the F.B.I. agent and police detective. Here it works. Lots of times it doesn�t.
And El Hombre can�t forget Hal Holbrook�s character, a Louisiana senator, who turns out to be one of the main characters in the film. Who would have thought? Not El Hombre.
Yes, this is a good one. Not too long either. 98 minutes. It could have been longer and El Hombre would still have liked it. Rent this one now.
Johnny Depp�s From Hell and Blow
El Hombre had great expectations for the film From Hell. What more could you ask for? An opium-addicted investigator who has paranormal abilities. He has dreams about the crimes he investigates. Add a Jack-the-Ripper type of criminal and ladies of the evening, and El Hombre is ready for a good movie-viewing time. Despite the huge potential for a gripping film, it slowly fizzled and El Hombre wondered, �do I really want to watch the whole movie?�
By the time the end came around, El Hombre didn�t really care, the ending was already apparent in a dream the investigator had, and the viewer could figure it out with a yawn. El Hombre says rent it if, out of the hundreds of movies available, this is the only one you haven�t seen.
Otherwise, watch Blow a second or third time. This biographical tale of Georgie, a small-time pot dealer who became a big-time cocaine dealer, seemed a genuinely honest, decent guy. Really, the ending was too much, even for El Hombre. From the beginning, when Georgie, as a kid, wanted to go to work with his dad, to the end when his father is dying and Georgie sends a tape-recorded message to his him, saying the things a son would say to his dad when he knows they�ll never meet again, the whole movie was too good for El Hombre�s words. See Blow.