DISTRICT 13: ULTIMATUM (2009) - 3/5 stars

Release: 2009

Director: Patrick Alessandrin

Writer: Luc Besson

Cast: Cyril Raffaelli, David Belle, Daniel Duval, Elodie Yung, Philippe Torreton, MC Jean Gab'1, James Deano, Laouni Mouhid, Fabrice Feltzinger, Pierre-Marie Mosconi

Soundtrack: various artists including Da Octopuss

Claim to fame: the long-awaited sequel to Luc Besson and Pierre Morel's 2004 international breakout hit "District B13"

Rating: 3/5 stars

Sure, sure, "District 9" was the critical darling of the sci-fi/genre community last year, but those who crave an injection of action into their veins knew all along that "District 13" was the cinematic destination for a kneecap-to-the-face adrenaline rush.

When "District B13" was released in 2004, it followed on the string of stylish action flicks like "Ong Bak" that combined wince-inducing stunts with a new athletic style known as parkour, a form of modern acrobatics that turns urban areas into obstacle courses.

The movie, directed by Pierre Morel and produced by Luc Besson, was short on intellect but hit the sweet spot for DVD importers craving their next action fix. And it proved that, even if he was never going to reach the artistic heights of "Leon" again, at least Besson was able to deliver slick Euro action vehicles every now and then.

As Jackie Chan would say: no fear. No stuntmen. No equal.

A lot has happened since 2004. Nearly every movie with a chase sequence has tried to incorporate some elements of parkour - even 2008's abysmal "Incredible Hulk" from fellow Besson protege Lous Letterier, which "B13" star Cyril Raffaelli contributed to. Cyril also played an evil henchman with Nightcrawler-esque agility in the tepid "Live Free and Die Hard" in 2007.

Over in Thailand, Tony Jaa managed to top the gravity-defying insanity of "Ong Bak" with not one but two amazing martial arts flicks ("The Protector," "Ong Bak 2"). It's safe to say that this particular brand of action filmmaking that was once so cutting edge has now reached Hollywood saturation.

So, as much as fans have been craving a sequel, you had to wonder: was there really a way for Besson to top himself and stay relevant with a "District 13" part 2? Lead actors Cyril Raffaelli and David Belle are a dynamic duo, no doubt, but they're no Tango & Cash; a sequel couldn't be sustained by their buddy chemistry alone. Bigger stunts, more elaborate action, a compelling storyline, and a kinetic visual style…those are the kinds of things viewers expected.

Now would be a good time for a snappy oneliner, guys

Unfortunately, Luc Besson's idea of crafting a worthy sequel here seems to be to take the same formula as the original and add a whole heaping load of CGI. Cue the collective groan from action fans everywhere.

Former director Pierre Morel is off to greener pastures - he directed the surprisingly good "Taken" and the surefire guilty pleasure "From Paris With Love," and is looking at doing a cinematic adaptation of "Dune." In his stead we have French filmmaker Patrick Alessandrin, a man I know next to nothing about but who apparently has some experience in directing French comedies. "Ultimatum" is his first film in 6 years. Are you worried yet?

I'll grant "Ultimatum" this: it looks and sounds gorgeous. The squalid beauty of a near-future Paris ghetto is brought to life by a stunning blu-ray transfer. The soundtrack features electronic/dubstep (I say that but I'm still not 100% sure what dubstep sounds like) by a French artist known as Da Octupuss, among others. It's music with a relentless, dirty groove that perfectly suits imagery of muscular dudes leaping from building to building while being chased by SWAT teams.

Jimmy Johns really takes it over the top with their new delivery service

Where this film goes astray is its screenplay and over-reliance on computer wizardry. The movie looks like it cost $100 million to make, but I'm sure it cost a fraction of that. Tere are times when it feels like Luc Besson's sole intent with "Ultimatum" was to prove that France could produce a movie as big, dumb, and loud as any Michael Bay blockbuster. But to what end? It's hyper-edited, digitally-enhanced sound and fury…signifying nothing.

The first "D13" opened with a parkour sequence that was so exciting and well-choreographed, it guaranteed that no matter what happened the rest of the movie, the filmmakers had your attention. With "Ultimatum," it takes literally 26 minutes for the plot to even kick in. Before that we have a vaguely creepy sequence where Raffealli dresses in drag to infiltrate a drug dealer's club. Let me put it this way: he's a bit too convincing. In fact, with a wig on he looks exactly like a muscular woman - and there are a few too many close-ups of his asscrack.

Cyril Raffaelli knows you're thinking about his ass

Of course, any talk about "plot" would be inconsequential as long as the action sequences held up. But they're either too cute for their own good or so far-fetched it's like they were cooked up by a computer program. This time around, Raffealli handles all the martial arts sequences while David Belle goes strictly parkour. One of my favorite moments was when our heroes are surrounded on both sides by a bunch of bad guys and Raffealli says something like, "I'll take care of these guys. You go do your Spider-Man routine." THAT'S what "Ultimatum" should have been about.

But again, it lets us down. I was hoping for Cyril's fight scenes to be up close and brutal, but too often he's using props - including a Van Gogh painting and a ladder - in choreography that seemed ripped right out of Jackie Chan's work from the 80's. Been there, done that. And David Belle's urban gymnastics no longer seem as impressive since everything looks so green-screened. By the time you got to the scene where Cyril and Belle drive a car through the hallways of a police station, you feel like "Ultimatum" is a Playstation 3 game where you don't even have to press any buttons.

Press X to Win

And I'm not even talking about the ridiculous story. You don't have to be Glenn Bleck to find the holes in this wacky far-Left fantasy that has a corrupt French military staging a fake cop killing so the President will agree to nuke District 13 and rebuild it as a suburban neighborhood for the middle class. As "Ultimatum" begins, the District has been drawn along 5 racial lines, including extremist Muslims, African warlords, the Chinese Triads, and Nazi skinheads. GUESS what brings all those folks together?

Yup, everybody puts aside their differences and teams together to try and stop the President from nuking the 5 tallest high-rises in the District and turning it into a bunch of condos. By the time you see the tall, lanky dude with "SS" and swastika tattoos all over his face raise his hand and join forces with a bunch of other ethnicities, well, if your eyes haven't rolled into the back of your head then you're not paying attention.

French skinheads everywhere wonder: can't we all just get along?

Again, if the action was up to par then things like this probably wouldn't matter, but "Ultimatum" just doesn't deliver the way its predecessor did. THAT SAID...wait for it, wait for it...I have to give it 3 stars simply because it looks and sounds astounding, and there was enough crazy fighting and stunts to keep me entertained for its relatively short runtime. And I can even appreciate the audaciousness of using blatant ethnic stereotypes as a means to promote racial harmony.

I'm also a huge fan of Cyril Raffaelli (as long as he's not wearing drag) ever since I saw him very nearly kick Jet Li's ass in 2001's "Kiss of the Dragon." I hope he stars in more movies where his name receives top billing - he's certainly earned it at this point. What can I say? Sometimes I'm loyal to a fault.

"Take two elbows to the face and call your doctor in the morning!"

How's that for a oneliner?

DREAD (2009) - 3/5 stars

Release: 2009

Director: Anthony DiBlasi

Writer: Anthony DiBlasi (screenplay), Clive Barker (short story)

Cast: Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Evans, Hanne Steen, Laura Donnelly, Jonathan Readwin, Carl McCrystal, Zoe Stollery, Eva Wyrwal, Elissa Dowling, Kirean Murphy

Soundtrack: Theo Green

Claim to fame: a film adaptation of Clive Barker's short story of the same name; one of Lionsgate's "8 Films to Die For" for 2009

Rating: 3/5 stars

"Dread" is part of the '8 Films to Die For'/'Horror After Dark' festival that Lionsgate has been doing for four years in a row now, where the studio picks up a series of low-budget horror movies and give them brief theatrical distribution around Halloween time.

From my experience, most of these films are rather awful and are designed to ride whatever trend is going on in the horror scene that year. The trailers for the 'Horror After Dark' movies annoyingly load at the start of every '8 Films' DVD and do their damnedest to make each film look indistinguishable from one another and resemble the latest "Saw" or "Hostel."

But I wanted to give "Dread" a chance since it's based on a short story by Clive Barker that I've always enjoyed. In my more impressionable years, I went through a phase where I read almost nothing but horror literature: mostly Stephen King, Clive Barker, H.P. Lovecraft, Poppy Z. Brite, and Thomas Ligotti. There's something about the horror genre that seems particularly suited to short fiction, so Barker was always one of my favorites for his "Books of Blood" collection of short stories as well as the novella "The Hellbound Heart," which served as the basis for "Hellraiser."

When translated to the screen, Barker has been pretty hit or mess; while I love "Hellraiser" and "Lord of Illusions," and have a soft spot for "Nightbreed" (which could have been great if it wasn't butchered by the studio), most of the other attempts at translating his work to the big screen have been a failure. If the filmmakers don't understand Barker's work or bother to maintain its integrity, you usually end up with a unruly mishmash of magic, excessive gore, and S&M puked up on screen.

"Hey guys, is this the audition room for 'Twilight'?

Oh God, wait, I'm in a Clive Barker movie?!"

We've seen it happen most recently with "Midnight Meat Train," which had the misfortune of being the first English-language film from Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura ("Versus," "Godzilla: Final War") - a director who is incredibly stylish, yet would not be my first choice at all to tell the story of what happens under the bowels of New York City at night. That movie's ridiculous climatic scene reduced itself to a schizophrenically-edited brawl between two super-powered aliens, seemingly because that was the only thing Kitamura knew to do.

Thankfully, "Dread" fares much better. It sticks fairly close to its source material, while at the same time taking some liberties to expand it to a 90 minute running time. What's nice is that, while it sometimes does trade in the imagery that is associated with "torture porn," for the most part "Dread" steers clear of horror movie cliche.

Poor bastard

The plot is refreshingly unique for the genre, telling the story of two college students. Jackson Rathbone plays Stephen, the intelligent and sensitive Film major (so sue me if I felt like I could relate to the character), who winds up crossing paths with another student named Quaid in a philosophy class. Qauid is, well, psychotic, basically: manipulative, controlling, violent, and obsessed with the concept of fear.

"I want to scare you...to death."

Not unlike the character of Jonathan Crane AKA the Scarecrow from the Batman comic books, Quaid wants to know what happens to the human mind when it's pushed beyond the boundaries of fear…when you come face to face with the thing that terrifies you the most, that chills you to the very core of your being and that you spend most of your waking hours trying not to think about - do you snap? Or do you become stronger, something more than you were before?

Stephen follows Quaid down this slippery slope, incorporating their study and fascination with fear into a multimedia project to serve as Stephen's Film studies thesis. Since this is a horror movie, I'm sure you can imagine that what can go wrong does go wrong and not everybody makes it out of this little exercise in terror alive. For the most part, it's compelling stuff.

It's not hard to look brooding with lighting like this

Jackson Rathbone is great. I'm sure it'll be a long time before he's taken seriously as an actor, if he ever is, simply because he's got a small role in the "Twilight" series. But I thought he was perfectly suited to this role. He plays Stephen as a good friend and a nice guy, and he has really amazing, gravity-defying hair that I'm jealous of.

Sure, Jackson might falter as an actor when he's called to bring on the heavy stuff - like a scene where he's strapped to a chair and supposed to be summoning the considerable anger his character has built up over the course of the film. But he's in almost every scene of the movie and carries it with aplomb, which is no small feat.

That hair! How does he get such wonderful hair?

Shaun Evans as Quaid, I feel, was miscast. Evans is a good actor and he's got the "psychotic" part of Quaid down, but he forgot the "charismatic" part. Realistically, nobody would keep this guy as a friend. There's nothing likable about the guy other than the fact that he's really, REALLY intense and even then that's not something most folks would put up with for a long time.

There's a scene where Quaid completely destroys all of Jackson's filmmaking equipment, then shows up later to apologize while driving the very same model car that Jackson's brother died in - which he had bought earlier in the film to get Jackson to "test the limits of his fear." At that point, I doubt anyone would stick around to live in Quaid's demented world but since we still have 40 minutes of the movie to go, that's exactly what happens. I also feel that with a more appropriate actor, the homoerotic tension between Stephen and Quaid could have been explored a bit further.

"I'mnotgayI'mnotgayI'mnotgay"

There's a scene earlier on where Quaid visits a strip club. I can't tell if this sequence is entirely gratuitous or actually inventive, but Quaid ends up hallucinating while watching some dancers. I think this part is only included to incorporate your usual Clive Barker "flesh mutilation" moment, as Quaid envisions a dancer's body being inflicted by axe wounds right before his eyes.

Unfortunately, Shaun Evans' facial expressions are so exaggerated and ridiculous - not to mention the poofy pompadour that he inexplicably has only for this scene - that the whole proceeding becomes laughable.

"Oh my God, my parents would kill me if they knew I was at a strip club!"

See, kids? Too much tanning is bad for your skin

Actress Laura Donnelly, who has mostly worked in British television up to this point, turns in a remarkably well-rounded performance as a college girl with a rather noticeable birthmark, something her character has struggled with all her life.

Donnelly really imbues her role with a lot more heart and reality than one would typically expect in a horror movie, let alone one distributed by Lionsgate. She makes the most of her limited screentime and I get the feeling most viewers will find her character to be one of the more memorable parts of the movie. This is definitely an actress to watch.

Laura Donnelly: the horror genre could use more actresses as talented as her

The soundtrack is worth mentioning as well. Whoever chose the song selection for "Dread" definitely has their finger on the pulse of contemporary alternative music. It was a refreshing change of pace to hear bands like M83, Silversun Pickups, and especially The Veils on a movie soundtrack. These are talented, genuinely "alternative" artists and, even better, their songs are used appropriately and memorably throughout the film.

Jackson Rathbone grows reflective while listening to the intense sounds

of M83 and The Veils

With "Dread," we have a well-acted and contempently filmed horror movie, albeit with a few missteps along the way, that does an adequate job of bringing Clive Barker's work to life. That might sound like faint praise but considering how beleaguered with bad "Saw" and Eli Roth imitators we horror fans are these days, I'm more than happy with a horror movie that revolves around dorm rooms and college campuses rather than Eastern European torture chambers.

Jackson Rathbone handily steps out of the looming shadow of "Twilight" and proves that he's able to carry a film on his own terms and Clive Barker doesn't have to live with the baggage of another "Midnight Meat Train"-style catastrophe. The ending of "Dread" might not be that satisfactory for many viewers (the Netflix reviews attest to that), but it ends exactly the way a short horror story would. And since when the credits rolled I felt exactly as though I'd just watched a short story translated to film, "Dread" is earning 3 stars from me.

"They like me...this blog really likes me."

HARD REVENGE, MILLY: BLOODY BATTLE (2009) - 3/5 stars

Release: 2009

Director: Takanori Tsujimoto

Writer: Takanori Tsujimoto

Cast: Miki Mizuno, Nao Nagasawa, Kazuki Tsujimoto, Rei Fujita, Masahiro Komoto, Mitsuki Koga

Soundtrack: Hikaru Yoshida

Claim to fame: "Call it hyper-violence or splatter-gore, this is the latest piece in Japanese nihilism"-Vortexan at Netflix; part of a double feature DVD that contains both the 45-minute "Hard Revenge, Milly" and the 75 minute "Hard Revenge, Milly: Bloody Battle"

Rating: 3/5 stars

20 years ago in Japan, we had the hallucinatory masterpiece that is Shinya Tsukamoto's "Tetsuo: The Iron Man" - truly a work of art comparable to "Eraserhead." In 2001, we had the likes of Takashi Miike's "Ichi the Killer" to keep pushing the boundaries of Japanese extreme cinema. Flashforward to modern times and, uh, it seems like something has gone horribly wrong.

Somewhere along the way I think these "shock movies" became more popular in America than they did in Japan and movie producers over there realized they could recoup an investment very easily as long as they targeted Western gorehounds and perverts. How else can you explain the transition from Shinya Tsukamoto to the likes of "Machine Girl" and "Tokyo Gore Police"?

Sure, they might have their moments but something has been lost in translation. There's no context or meaning behind the depravity onscreen, just a string of increasingly horrific images designed to appeal to cinema-goers' most base desires. Which is, apparently, mutated girl sex and dicks being sliced off.

Sorry, pal, that's what you get for wearing a gaudy red and green track suit

Out of this crop of current direct-to-DVD splatter flicks comes "Hard Revenge, Milly: Bloody Battle," which is actually…pretty good. Damn, looks like I just contradicted myself. Fortunately, I can explain. See, "Hard Revenge, Milly" is essentially two films that come on one disc. The first feature, titled "Hard Revenge, Milly," is only about 45 minutes long - and it's bad. In fact, it manages to illustrate everything that I find distasteful about Japanese shock cinema right now. The second film, "Hard Revenge, Milly: Bloody Battle," is significantly longer and improves on the first installment in every way possible.

Yup, this guy is still firing a gun even after his head has been sliced off

"Hard Revenge, Milly" is set in a post-apocalyptic Japan, a setting not unlike the "Mad Max" films. Milly was a good woman with a husband and child, until a roving band of sadistic thugs brutally murdered her family before her very eyes. She was left for dead herself but ultimately rebuilt by scientists, who outfitted her with cybernetic weapons. Now a shell of the woman she used to be, she roves the wastelands of Japan in search of the maniacs who stole her life. Her only purpose in life, revenge.

It's a predictable set-up but a satisfying one. Who doesn't love a good revenge story, as played out as these things tend to be in our post-"Kill Bill" world? We still like to see bad guys get their comeuppance. The problem is, the first movie gives you no sense of scope for what's happening onscreen. There's absolutely no world-building done; we don't feel like Milly is roaming a post-apocalyptic landscape so much as she is moving from one abandoned building to another, engaging in bloody fights with random Japanese punks.

One of the gory kills is actually repeated in its entirety twice, before and after the credits, a sure sign that your movie is scrambling for content. By the end, no matter how spectacularly graphic things get you can't help but feel like what you're watching is violence for the sake of violence.

That's why the sequel, "Hard Revenge, Milly: Bloody Battle" works. It provides context for everything. An increase in production values means that we actually get to see more of the post-apocalyptic world any how it as affected society. Suddenly, the homicidal thugs are not just random killers but a new breed of criminal that has begun to pocket the landscape. We see how society has broken down in the wake of nuclear armageddon but also how the last vestiges of humanity are surviving.

All the violence and depravity makes sense because we see a reason behind it: the world has changed. Moral codes don't mean much when everything is about survival - and if you're insane enough, it's all about getting your kicks, even if that means randomly sodomizing members of your own gang or lighting babies on fire.

In "Bloody Battle," the kills are more outlandish and creative - I'll try not to spoil any - but feel warranted, as Milly is constantly fighting for her life. This was also the first time that I bought Milly as a bad-ass warrior who was capable of surviving in a ruined future; she no longer seemed like a former soccer mom with an asymmetrical haircut, but a well-trained killing machine.

And with an increased runtime there also comes more room for character development. We meet the eccentric doctor who is tasked with keeping Milly's internal machinery running. The interesting wrinkle that Milly's mind may not even be her own is tossed out there. Is her bloody quest for the revenge merely the product of someone else's memories? Perhaps she's left a pile of her corpses in her wake for nothing.

The villain in "Bloody Battle" is also a hell out of a lot more fun than any character in the first movie. Okay, I'm sure there are a lot of people who'd call him an offense gay stereotype but…you've got to have a sense of humor about these DTV flicks. Besides, this dude is not in the closet at all: he loves the gay lifestyle and he mourns the loss of Jack (the guy Milly spectacularly killed at the end of her first outing), who claims was the "sexiest" and "most violent" man he ever knew.

This guy frequently steals the show with his one-liners espousing the virtues of the gay lifestyle. At one point he catches one of his henchman trying to rape a tied up female prisoner and he literally smashes the guy's face into a wall and then remarks, "That's why I hate bisexuals."

For sheer gory outlandishness, I don't know if anyone will be able to top the scene in "Machine Girl" where a Yakuza wife makes a sushi chef eat his own severed fingers as sushi rolls…but that's just it: that's really the only thing I remember from "Machine Girl." It was an otherwise forgettable exercise in gratuitousness. "Hard Revenge, Milly" proves that the only way this particular subgenre Japanese cinema is gonna last - and believe me it's proven to be quite popular, with the producers AND directors behind "Tokyo Gore Police" all having projects on the way - is by tempering its shock value with actual evidence of filmmaking skill.

In "Bloody Battle," director Takanori Tsujimoto shows that he has a flair for directing action sequences; he deftly balances scenes of Milly cutting down henchmen like cannon fodder with more elaborate and choreographed battles against skilled opponents. At the same time he proves that with a decent budget he's able of creating a believable cinematic world so that the violence has context and (relative) meaning. I look forward to seeing where he does in the future, with the hopes that he won't devolve into the deviant parody of "Tokyo Gore Police."

If it seems like I'm particularly hard on the makers of Japanese extreme cinema, it's because I like them a lot and, frankly, I expect more from them than their American contemporaries. The legacy of gonzo Japanese flicks from the past 20 years are part of the reason I became obsessed with movies in the first place.

The problem is, "Versus" came out in 2000 and "Ichi the Killer" came out in 2001 - and we're STILL witnessing the outright theft of shots and motifs from both those movies. I want to see a Japanese splatter flick that stimulates more than just the viewer's gag reflex. Fortunately, "Milly"'s hard-edged portrayal of the apocalypse is a step in the right direction.

Something about all this...

feels a bit too familiar

POST-NOTE: Now that I've realized just how easy it is to make screen grabs of Instant and DVD flicks, expect the blog to become much improved. To that effect, I went back to reviews of "China Heat," "The Octagon," and "D.C. Cab" and added my own screen captures. There will be more to come. Thanks for reading!

LIGHT SLEEPER (1992) - 3/5 stars

Release: 1992

Director: Paul Schrader

Writer: Paul Schrader

Cast: Willem Dafoe, Susan Sarandon, Dana Delany, Mary Beth Hurt, David Clennon, Victor Garber, Jane Adams, Sam Rockwell, David Spade

Soundtrack: Michael Been

Claim to fame: a fairly obscure picture for Paul Schrader, although apparently someone once called it "The Taxi Driver of the 90's" because that's on the box art

Rating: 3/5 stars

I made it all the way through "Light Sleeper" because I love Willem Dafoe as an actor. If you don't share a similar appreciation for the man, then you might not want to spend an hour and 41 minutes with a film that is as conceptually flawed as this one.

The script, from Paul Schrader ("Taxi Driver," "Rolling Thunder") is decent enough. The narrative hook of the story - a mid-level drug dealer looking to get out of the business before it kills him - is compelling if you're not bored to tears of drug movies (what's nice is that this doesn't really deal with the addiction aspect like so many others do).

But there's one thing that really holds "Light Sleeper" down every time it tries to take off, and that's the music. This is a shining example of how a bad soundtrack can ruin a decent movie.

Dafoe spends a good 70% of this movie riding in the back of a black sedan

or walking the streets of New York

The musical instrumentation itself isn't bad: low-key jazz numbers with synth pads and bass to color the sights of a neon-lit, early 90's New York City. But for some reason, Schrader went and hired a vocalist, Michael Been, to sing over the music. Been was the guitarist/singer for an 80's band known as The Call. Here he sounds like a bad Bruce Springsteen impersonator hired to do an even WORSE impersonation of Leonard Cohen.

The lyrics are relentlessly overwrought. While the script is low-key enough to keep the characters' emotions internalized, the music telegraphs everything like an airplane message written in the sky.

Dafoe in repose

What would have merely been a scene of William Dafoe walking the streets of New York alone at night becomes unbearably pretentious when the singer groans lines like, "My inner demons tear me apart/rip my soul through the night/as I walk alone/I'm on my own/oh yeah/I'm the walking dead."

It gets even worse during the romantic moments. And you know because this is a Willem Dafoe movie not called "Spider-Man," he has to show his ass.

"Remember that night/when we made love/and I looked in your eyes/and I saw the stars above/oh yeah/How do we get back there?" It doesn't help that every melody sounds like the vocalist is just waiting to burst out into Cohen's "Hallelujah."

Dafoe's backside is like Harvy Keitel's junk - you just know you're gonna see it

If you can someone get past the offensively bad soundtrack, the movie is certainly watchable. It attempts to be what I assume is a fairly realistic take on dealing drugs. Dafoe plays the kind of "DD" who only associates with clients his supplier has a relationship with - these are upscale people with high-rise apartments; you know, the club-going and jet-set type.

He's rarely in danger of having a gun pulled on him or being shivved in the back; he's never out on the streets, dealing smack to kids. It's not that kind of film, which is actually a nice change of pace.

I think Patrick Bateman tried to reserve a table a this club

Unfortunately, the movie does not live up to the talents of Paul Schrader. When things do build to a moment of ominous violence, as they often do in Schrader movies, it honestly feels like the director is merely going through the motions. There's no climactic build like in "Taxi Driver" or "Rolling Thunder," it's more like Schrader felt like: "Well, it's a movie set in the world of drug dealing, I guess I've got to have some people get shot at the end."

A subplot (that honestly goes nowhere) about a drug-related serial killer feels similarly tacked on and haphazard.

Don't fuck with Dafoe!

Dafoe's character is just not that interest outside of the fact that it's Dafoe playing him. His face is a striking canvas of expressions which are used to great effect throughout the movie, but do we really care about the man that's behind him, Johnny LeTour? Not really. Same goes for Susan Sarandon as Dafoe's supplier, who is now looking to start a respectable cosmetics business.

These are just regular folks who got into the drug business because they thought it'd be an easy way to make tax-exempt money. It turned out to be just that, a business, and they didn't do as well as they'd hoped…but haven't done anything to change their circumstances until now, way late in the game.

Why the smirk, Willem? You're not thinking about

showing your ass in this movie, are you?

Oh, you...

The central question is: can people change? After spending at least half his life either doing drugs or dealing them, can Johnny LaTour make a break for it and become legit? And what kind of line of work is a drug dealer qualified to do after they go straight?

But there's nothing particularly interesting about these folks. The only real relatable aspect to Dafoe's character is his relationship with his ex-wife, played by Dana Delany. Dafoe clearly still cares for her and wishes that they could start over and rekindle their romance, but considering that she treats a well-meaning Dafoe like shit for 90% of the movie it's hard to root for them to get back together.

What a lovely early 90's haircut you have there, Ms. Delany

"Light Sleeper" has enough things going for it: an immersive look at New York City nightlife in the early 90's, some fantastic lighting, and Dafoe in fine form. Dafoe's limited voice-over narration provides fascinating insight into the world of a drug dealer. But the film provides none of the darkness or sense of imperativeness of Schrader's other works.

A scene where Dafoe is having his aura read by a physic who warns him of imminent danger and betrayal only rings false; despite his line of work, we never really get the sense that Dafoe's life is threatened. There's no sense of urgency, no reason to care, other than the fact that Willem is a great actor. You add a terrible score to the proceedings and the whole deck of cards just collapses in on itself.

You'd think that after watching his own movie, "Taxi Driver," Paul Schrader would have realized that Bernard Herrmann's score perfectly translated his characters' emotional landscapes onto the screen…instead of relying on a piss-poor Leonard Cohen wannabe to broadcast all the meaning of the film. Sadly, that was not the case here and it's (part of) what prevents "Light Sleeper" from being anything other than a watch for die-hard Schrader or Dafoe completists.

Warning: you may feel like this after watching "Light Sleeper"

if you don't keep your expectations in check.

Paradoxically, this film might help cure insomnia if you have it