Get Shorty
Hollywood movies about Hollywood life (especially comedies) can be amongst the trickiest for any filmmaker to adequately pull off, in many ways because the subject matter can come across as being bizarrely unrealistic for those involved in the industry who were not involved directly in the movie itself and thus can see the inaccuracies that regular people might buy into that stick out like a sore thumb while those same regular people fail to pick up on any of the in jokes that get thrown in as well. However, a bigger chance can be taken when the main character who is meant to be a “regular person” (and is a devout movie lover as well) is himself played by one of the biggest of the big name stars that Hollywood has ever produced and in fact has his own wide assortment of iconic roles and movie moments. That star in fact would be John Travolta, just as renowned for cutting up a dance floor with Olivia Newton-John and Uma Thurman as he is for walking down the street to the strains of The Bee Gees’ Stayin Alive. Cast here as Chilli Palmer in this 1995 Barry Sonnenfeld film (a performance that garnered him a LOT of attention, a Golden Globe win, and gobs of Oscar talk that added up to nothing), Travolta takes on the part of a Miami based loan shark who is little more than just another cog in the machine of organized crime, but when fate takes him on out to LA to collect a debt, he winds up falling in love with the city as well as the idea of backdooring his way into the film industry as a producer. But how? Turns out that one of his collection jobs is on a shady producer of reportedly really bad b movies (Gene Hackman, playing a weasel to brilliant perfection) and while explaining the terms of how payment will be made, suddenly decides to also explain his idea for a movie he wants to get made. It’s nothing great, more like a film version of his own life in the criminal underworld (and possibly this very movie that we’re watching). While Travolta is sincere in his interest to get this movie made, Hackman becomes seemingly enraptured by the concept probably because going along with it will get him out of his sizable debt and so the two go into business together. That’s the story in a nutshell with these two intriguing lead performances, as Hackman is little more than just a sleazy loser whose name is credited as a producer on movie posters making the absolute worst films that the business can produce and no doubt drawing the inspiration for his character from countless real life figures whose names have floated past us on the opening credits of any given crappy flick. Travolta is even more fascinating, a so called “normal person” next to the “phony Hollywood types” with a penchant for being direct and getting right to the point in conversations with little tolerance for bullshit as well as the inordinate ability to never get whipped in a fight no matter how much of a size difference there is between he and his opponent making for a comically intimidating figure whom Hackman and others emulate throughout the movie. The film boasts a rather impressive supporting cast in its bullpen, including Rene Russo as a b grade horror actress (what was once known as a “scream queen”) who is involved with Hackman but winds up with Travolta even as she longs to be a real star in a real movie, Danny DeVito (arguably miscast being such a wormy little shit) as one of Hollywood’s most renowned leading man mulling over whether to play in either Travolta’s movie or another script that Hackman is trying to bring to the screen even though DeVito at least nails the shallow, disconnected from actual reality narcissism that most movie stars seem to embody, James Gandolfini as a former stuntman turned hoodlum whom Travolta takes a shine to because of all the movies that he’s worked on, David Paymer as a nervous business owner with a lot of cash owed to Travolta and the mob and an uncredited Bette Midler as Hackman’s girlfriend / widow to his best friend. All of them fare well save for Delroy Lindo as a drug runner who’s also trying to buy his way into the movie business through Hackman and can’t seem to understand why he now has to deal with Travolta as well. As the film’s de facto bad guy, Lindo plays it off as being way too calm and relaxed (even when his own life is in danger) with little to no intensity at all and not even much in the way of humorous touches when it’s called for. Rumor has it that Samuel L. Jackson was heavily considered for the role and it would have been fantastic to see with the required edginess and sense of real danger that Jackson could have brought in place of Lindo’s poor substitute. But despite all of this star power that comprises this impressive cast, in the end it’s one guy who makes this movie memorable in the one and only Dennis Farina (known more for being a TV and character actor) as Ray “Bones” Barboni, the ultimate shit talking Mafia wise guy whom as it turns out is the true rival to Travolta both in Miami and elsewhere. After a series of run ins with each other which sees Travolta come out on top (but for which Farina can’t seek any payback because the New York bosses protect Travolta), Travolta flies out west to take care of his duties while Farina waits for his chance and by happenstance, when Hackman makes the extremely stupid move of calling him (after Travolta had told him who he was) and badmouthing him in the hopes of getting him to invest in his movie, he boards a plane and heads straight out to LA himself. It is at this point when he arrives that the movie kicks into overdrive with Farina’s take no prisoners approach to tracking down his hated enemy, starting with him trashing Hackman’s office (and Hackman himself) when the sketchy producer tries to smooth talk him with some Hollywood bullshit only to piss off the legit badass who busts him up and even manages to kill off one of Lindo’s goons who just happened to walk in and found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. The movie cruises along pretty well after that besides all of the business with the Lindo character (whose desire to enter the film industry himself comes off as being pretty pathetic compared to Travolta’s character) which includes a plot point about $500,000 in drug money that’s stored in an LAX airport locker that may or may not be constantly watched by DEA agents. Unfortunately though, the film’s “twist” ending is the biggest letdown of all, a cutesy poo smoochie kiss to its subject matter that seems to embrace the so called Hollywood attitude instead of savagely mocking it, an ending so bad that it was only natural for it to lead into a sequel that became infamous as being maybe Travolta’s worst movie and along with him and DeVito, also featured a major role for one of the “surprise cameo” actors in the finale here (who was playing himself) and the stench of this awful finish (which not only shortchanges Farina’s character but the viewers as well) nearly sinks the whole enterprise if not for the high quality of the writing and acting that came before it with the not too unbelievable conceit that the film industry is just as vicious, cutthroat and downright dirty as the world of organized crime itself and as for Travolta, credit must be given for him looking his usual self while still diving into a character who obviously loves movies so much that despite being a Mafia badass he can still sit there gleefully in a movie theater just like a little kid watching Orson Welles’ corrupt cop getting his at the end of Touch Of Evil, just like we will always remember Travolta himself strutting across the dance floor in Saturday Night Fever or bopping and singing Greased Lightning in Grease or sticking a ten foot hypodermic needle in Uma Thurman’s chest in Pulp Fiction. There is no license or permit needed for loving movies, no background requirement necessary, so even if this movie only partially succeeds in its self satire, then at least the needed charisma and star power was still brought to the table…
8/10