2 Days in the Valley

THIS is a romantic comedy?
Yes. You've seen "grunge on the run" romantic comedies--Wild at Heart (1990), Natural Born Killers (1994) come to mind, and poor waitress/crazy old man romantic comedies, e.g., As Good As It Gets (1997)--well, this is a mousy secretary/aging hit man romantic comedy.

Somewhat. It's also a tongue-in-the cheek satire on all things that Hollywood thinks movie-goers crave: cute dogs, sexy women, good-hearted underdogs winning out, dumb cops, the ugly rich (Greg Cruttwell's wormy Allan Hopper fits the bill), shoot-outs, blood, dead bodies (enough to grace a Shakespearean stage) and that favorite of testosterone males everywhere: a good old-fashioned cat fight.

Charlize Theron and Teri Hatcher provide the eye appeal as they slap and toss each other around; and to be honest I have to say they are definitely worth watching. Excellent support comes from James Spader, as an amazingly clean-shaven (what does he use--Nair?) psycho-sickie with a stopwatch.

But...

An Underrated Ensemble Drama / Crime Thriller.
Many people put this in the "Quentin Tarantino Rip-off" pile, but it really owes more of a debt to Robert Altman than it does to Tarantino. Sure, it has Crime Thriller elements, but at its Core it is an Ensemble Drama akin to "Short Cuts" and "Magnolia".

The Star-Studded Cast includes Eric Stoltz (as a discontent vice cop), Jeff Daniels (as Eric's hard-nosed partner), James Spader (as an ice-cold hit man), Danny Aiello (as a washed-up hit man), Charlize Theron (as James' accomplice/girlfriend), Teri Hatcher (as a murder witness) and Glenne Headly (as a Hostage). They, and Everyone else in the film, give Fitting, Seasoned Performances.

Stoltz and Spader give the Best performances, both Funny and Real. Especially Spader, he virtually Carries the Film. Charlize Theron, in one of her first films, is Very, very Attention-Grabbing, through her Looks and her Abilities. Daniels and Hatcher appear too Infrequently to be Memorable. Aiello and Headly give equally Likeable performances that...

Two Days in the Valley
This is a really good movie, with an unbelievable cast and a brilliant plot! The music soundtrack is also very good, and there is not a bad scene in the movie! I just can't understand why nobody has seen this film! Here we have a variety of bizarre characters (highlights were Danny Aiello, James Spader, Charlize Theron, and Jeff Daniels) who stumble into each other's lives. The director threw in a lot of little interesting quirks, such as the murderous assassin smirking as he watches a cop sight down the barrel of a watergun, or a spiteful old man who we came to hate earlier slinking out of a Japanese pleasure house in the dead of night. (Another interesting thing for me about the movie is to watch for the manner in which every character's name is given as the plot unfolds. ALL of them are named at least once somewhere in the film!) The movie is very well written and very interesting, and if there is any problem whatsoever, it would have to be that at times the dialogue...

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