Charles (Miami Blues) Willeford is my favorite author. Mick Jagger is my favorite rock star. Because of that, I’m already inclined to love this movie. Add in a script by A Simple Plan’s Scott B. Smith, and you have a recipe for a must-see.
Shady art critic James Figueras (Claes Bang) gets roped into a scheme by a rich art collector named Cassidy (Jagger) to steal the last work of a reclusive painter (Donald Sutherland). Cassidy sets up an interview between the two, which should give Figueras ample opportunity to nab the painting. Predictably, things don’t go according to plan, which leads to more deception and even murder.
All this sounds simple enough, but the way director Giuseppe Capotondi slowly parcels out the details is a lot of fun. Admittedly, the set-up is better than the follow-through (the symbolism with the flies gets hammered home a bit too much). That said, there’s still plenty to enjoy along the way.
Most enjoyable of all are the performances. Bangs does a good job as he looks like you’d imagine a typical Willeford character. He’s haggard and beaten up by life and a series of poor choices but he nevertheless keeps moving forward. He gets a great monologue early on where he ropes a bunch of old biddies into thinking a crappy painting has historical significance. As his scrappy love interest, Elizabeth (The Crown) Debicki looks great in her nude scenes and has a winsome early Cameron Diaz pluck about her. Jagger (in his first role in twenty years) was never as good as an actor as he was a rock star, but this might be his best performance. For someone who hasn’t been on a movie set in decades, he seems to be relishing playing a shady rich dude who holds all the cards and lords over people with a Cheshire Cat grin. Sutherland has a sardonic twinkle in his eye, and he too looks like he’s having a ball playing a character who skews against his reputation.
This is the first adaptation of a Willeford work in two decades. (The last being The Woman Chaser in 1999.) The novel was kind of an atypical Willeford book. Even though it was largely about a conman, it was set in the art world far removed from his crime novels. His ultimate point being that critics and art dealers are really no different than the hoods in his other books. The film, like the novel, falls short of the Willeford greats like Cockfighter and Miami Blues, but I’m glad it exists. Speaking strictly as a fan of the man, I hope they don’t wait another twenty years to make another Willeford adaptation.
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