Tequila Sunrise

A return to adult filmmaking is robert towne's tequila sunrise. There is more here than the average girl gets in the middle of two boy story. This is a very entertaining and intriguing mix of characterizations and the meanings of friendship. Robert towne writes well rounded characters and situations that may on page seem fantastic but come across very natural on screen. The cinematography is top notch by conrad hall further proving his talent.

Legendary screenwriter Towne's thriller is a slick, watchable story about honour among friends involved (from various perspectives) in a big drug deal. Unfortunately, it's also a load of tosh. The characters are all beautiful (Michelle Pfiffer especially), but completely unconvincing, none more so than Kurt Russell's cop who never seems to do a single day of real police work. The moral complexities of the story lose out to gloss, and a ghastly soundtrack, at every point - even the cleverness of the plot has no impact, so intentionally flat are the characters. Fundamentally this film is all about aspiration - it sells you a lifestyle (good food, beautiful women, golden beaches) and the details are just a peg on which to hang the ad. Passes the time, but there's something fundamentally unpleasant in the whole conceit. A film of the 80s in every sense.

This is a very underrated movie about lifelong friends with the bad guys having a lot of good in them and the good guys a lot of bad. The michelle pfeifer part of the movie is actually the worst part but of course a romance plot has to be included. She serves the purpose of dividing kurt russel and mel gibson even farther yet they remain friends because they always have been.

Spoilers herein. This film is at root a mess, another rehash of the buddies who end up on opposite sides of the law. Naturally, they compete over the same female trophy. Drugs, stupid cops bossing a breezy detective. These are all trotted out as the formula requires. Ho hum. I suppose the producers thought that attractive Mel and Michelle would gloss over the vapid framework. At least they are early enough in their careers to energetically try. Later, they would simply show up. (Michelle obsesses over her unattractive neck and here has hair that is the perfect solution.) But behind the machinations of the product, two fine craftsmen do their work. Sadly, both are now gone. Conrad Hall does the cinematography. You can see how blunt the director is in how things are blocked and how crafty Hall is in getting around those limitations, even exploiting them. My favorite example of this is Mel answering the phone after predictably bedding Michelle and leaving her in the trailer. Upstairs, pooltable, the Carlos-twist, are all visually conveyed. And then there is Carlos himself, an actor leagues beyond everyone else we see and a character more fulfilled. Raul knows how to act a man that acts, how to live large in a body that is living large and to have the two largenesses interact internally. A fine man. Two fine men: one the tequila, one the sunrise. Ted?s Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.

No matter how strong a cast, without a script, the story falls apart. Russel, and Gibson perform strongly, but have too little to work with. One word can describe this film, boring! I could not rewind the tape fast enough, and get it out of the vcr. Do not rent it, even if there is nothing else watch. 3/10

I loved this movie when it was first released and I still love it 22 years later. The language was definitely R-rated, but because I loved the movie so much I was willing to overlook that. The characters were perfect, the actors were perfect and the script was great. Mel Gibson has never looked better and exuded a vulnerability that made you root for him throughout the film. Michelle Pfifer is gorgeous, as always, and perfect for the part. Kurt Russell is perfect in his role, too. The hot tub scene was romantic without being raunchy and was tastefully done, (not graphic) allowing one to watch it without being uncomfortable. It is one of my all-time favorite movies, timeless, and still keeping me guessing even though I have many of the scenes memorized word for word. I don't know if it was under-rated when it was released or not, but I recommended it then and still do now.

I knew Chinatown; Chinatown was a friend of mine; you're no Chinatown. Why Robert Towne chose to keep his name in the credits deserves more discussion than the movie itself. The script is really bad. All atmosphere and no substance makes it impossible for the actors to find any emotion, much less the appropriate one, to bring to the story beats. So they end up winging every scene. Each of the actors adopts a different strategy — Raul Julia overplays, Mel Gibson charms his way, Kurt Russell out dresses everyone, while Michelle Pfeiffer just demurs. Hollow, hollow, hollow stuff. And that love scene: how does a girl with her head seemingly screwed on right suddenly go that overboard. Okay, you can make together, but "I want to marry you."? If you want a film combining substance, atmosphere, plus style, try LA Confidential. Curtis Hanson would have trashed the Tequila script and started over again, but then he's a great director who knows the secret is starting with a good script. Which brings us back to Towne. I guess he just lost his touch.

This movie has a cast to die for; Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kurt Russell, Raul Julia, J.T. Walsh, Arliss Howard. It makes you wonder though why they all ever agreed to appear in this movie. It's a waste of their talents really, since the movie its script doesn't provide the movie with anything interesting or exciting. Instead it more often confuses and bores. I was real disappointed by the movie its script. While '80's police movies also aren't exactly know for their great or original stories but this story is even worse than usual. In the end you just stop carrying about anything that is happening in this movie or for any of its characters, since the movie has dragged along for far too long. The movie is lacking a certain depth with its story. In all honesty the movie really didn't started off too bad but its one of those movies that gets worse by the minute. In the end it makes you regret you've ever watched it. It's sad that not even the great cast could put some life into the movie and its story. It's also a rather unknown movie from each of the movie its actors. They still try their very best but no, I can't really say it helps much. Although it of course is certainly true that the presence of actors such as Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kurt Russell, Raul Julia and J.T. Walsh still uplifts the movie. I mean, with a totally different and unknown cast the movie would had been far worse for sure. What the movie is lacking is some good action. It would at least had made the movie more interesting to watch. And when you have an '80's action-star such as Mel Gibson in your movie, why not use that? Instead now the movie feels like a movie done action-crime-thriller movie style but without any action in it and also without much thriller elements, since the movie is just not exciting or original enough to allow any of these elements to completely work out. The movie also suffers from an horrible '80's music curse; the '80's music! It's so dreadful, hearing constantly some idiot playing his saxophone as loud as he can, with an occasional guitar and drums joining in. It's a score you can normally expected in a bad *-flick. Oh well, it's not exactly as if this is THE worst movie ever made but it also isn't exactly a movie I would recommend to anyone, despite the presence of some good big names in it. 5/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

"Tequila Sunrise" is sometimes quoted as an example of neo-noir, a genre of film which uses modern cinema techniques while trying to capture the spirit of the classic films noirs from the forties and fifties. Other examples include Polanski's "Chinatown", the Michael Winner remake of "The Big Sleep", Lawrence Kasdan's "Body Heat" and Curtis Hanson's more recent "L.A. Confidential". The title is derived from the well-known cocktail which has three ingredients, tequila, orange juice, and grenadine. Mel Gibson is seen drinking this cocktail on a couple of occasions, but the significance of the title may be that the film explores the triangular relationship between a "cocktail" of three main characters, Dale "Mac" McKussic, Nick Frescia and Jo Ann Vallinari. (The film was advertised in France under the slogan "Un Cocktail Explosif"). Mac is a former drug dealer who claims that he is now trying to go straight. Nick is not only the head of the Los Angeles narcotics squad for but also Mac's close friend. Jo Ann is a local restaurant owner with whom both Mac and Nick are in love. The two men's friendship is therefore under severe strain, and not only because of their feelings for Jo Ann. There are suspicions that Mac has slipped back into his old ways and may be trying to pull off one last deal with another old friend, a Mexican drug baron named Carlos. If these suspicions prove correct, Nick will be duty-bound to arrest him. Like many examples of both film noir and neo-noir, "Tequila Sunrise" has a complex plot, one where the motives of all the characters are suspect and where nobody knows whom they can trust. (The writer/director Robert Towne was also the scriptwriter for "Chinatown", a film with one of the most convoluted plots in cinema history). Nevertheless, I have never really regarded it as authentic neo-noir. There was always more to film noir than a crime-related theme and a complicated storyline. Atmosphere was equally important; in some cases (such as Howard Hawks' original "The Big Sleep") it was paramount. In the eighties it would have been virtually impossible to make a film using the moody black-and-white photography which characterised film noir, but neo-noir directors were often able to give their films an equivalent atmospheric look. "Body Heat", for example, has an atmosphere of extreme heat, of sweat, of physical lassitude, of moral decay and of sexual tension, something emphasised not only by John Barry's jazz score but also Kasdan's colour scheme dominated by blacks, reds and oranges. The film stars three of the up-and-coming stars of the eighties in Gibson, Kurt Russell and Michelle Pfeiffer. None of them really give their best performance here, although Pfeiffer is always very watchable. Although in the eighties Gibson was best known for his "tough guy" roles, especially in the "Mad Max" series, he does not bring much menace to the role of Mac or suggest his criminal background. Roger Ebert called him "the nicest drug dealer you'd ever want to know". In 1988 Towne was much more experienced as a screenwriter than as a director. He had worked on the scripts for more than a dozen films and several TV series, but had only directed one previous film, the very different "Personal Best". It is therefore perhaps not surprising that "Tequila Sunrise" comes across as more of a writer's film than a director's one. Towne inserts all the plot twists and turns that we have come to expect from noir and neo-noir, but there are none of the visual touches we associate with the genre. The film is surprisingly slow-moving and wordy for what is supposed to be a crime thriller, dominated more by talk than by physical action except during the (literally) explosive finale. Towne may have had ambitions to become an auteur director like Polanski, but "Tequila Sunrise", a run-of-the-mill crime drama, is not the work of an auteur. 5/10

Michelle Pfeiffer, Mel Gibson, and Kurt Russell are the three corners of the love triangle that makes up a significant part of the plot in this tense thriller. Gibson plays Mac, a legendary drug dealer who is trying to get out of the drug business but finds that no one wants him to leave, not even the police. Russell plays the part of the detective who is hot on Mac's trail but is reluctant to capture and charge him because the two men were childhood friends, and Pfeiffer is the beautiful restaurant owner who is torn by her feelings for the two men. The thing that really causes this otherwise unoriginal story to keep up a brisk pace is the question of what everyone's individual intentions are, who knows what, and who told what to whom. Tequila Sunrise is full of effective plot twists that sometimes twist right back to the way they were, even at the strangest times (such as in the boat near the end of the film). (spoilers) Jerry Bruckheimer and Company could take a serious lesson in making romantic subplots work in action films from Tequila Sunrise, in which Gibson and Pfeiffer eventually develop a very effective relationship with each other. The most moving scene involving this element of the film takes place when Mac is telling her about his reasons for teaching his lawyer (who is also her lawyer) to sell drugs. This has a lot to do with both of their skills as actors, because I've already seen Mel do this several times in the hardcore action Lethal Weapon series, and Michelle is so beautiful that she can do anything she wants. Tequila Sunrise is a heavily atmospheric film reminiscent of other modern classic films noir, such as the stiflingly atmospheric Body Heat, and much of the effect is the same. Kurt Russell is the stereotypical male in a film noir, with the slicked back hair, the nice suit, and the ever-present cigarette. Michelle Pfeiffer would fulfill the traditional femme fatale role very nicely, especially given her attractiveness as well as her overall physical fit of the description of the femme fatale, except that she doesn't really drag anyone down. Films noir usually end in death, for the femme fatale as well as the male victim, but Tequila Sunrise doesn't do that. This is one of the ways that the story was made to work so well, because even though you pretty much know that Mac will get the girl (if only because he's Mel Gibson), it twists many other expectations around. This is a thinking person's action film, and it's a shame that these are so uncommon.