CHINA MOON (director: John Bailey; screenwriter: Roy Carlson; cinematographer: Willy Kurant; editors: Carol Littleton/Jill Savitt; music: George Fenton; cast: Ed Harris (Kyle Bodine), Madeleine Stowe (Rachel Munro), Charles Dance (Rupert Monro), Patricia Healy (Adele), Benicio Del Toro (Lamar Dickey), Roger Aaron Brown (Police Captain), Tim Powell (Fraker); Runtime: 99; MPAA Rating: R; producer: Barrie M. Osborne; Orion Pictures; 1991)
"The film's saving grace is in the emotionally impactful performance by Ed Harris."
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
China Moon is cinematographer John Bailey's directorial debut film. The film was made in 1991 but not released until 1994. It's an imitative neo-noir film modeled after Double Indemnity, The Postman Rings Twice, and Kasdan's Body Heat (81). Overall its a fairly routine thriller, set in a Florida small-town. But, it picks up steam in its heated payoff. The film's saving grace is in the emotionally impactful performance by Ed Harris. Also, Benicio Del Toro effectively makes for a creepy homicide detective.
The film's title is derived from the saying a China moon (Full moon) makes one do strange things. The soft-spoken Kyle Bodine (Ed Harris) is a top-notch detective, in his small-town he's known as the best cop on the force. The opening scene shows how professional he is in finding clues to solve a murder. Kyle's new partner is a grumpy and bored young detective, Lamar Dickey (Benicio Del Toro), who can't see things clearly because he's so bored with his job.
The lonely and unassuming bachelor lusts after an unhappily married woman, Rachel Munro (Madeleine Stowe), he meets in a bar. The beautiful femme fatale is married to an adultress, ruthless multi-millionaire, Rupert (Dance), who abuses her. He's a one-dimensional bad guy. But he has 12 million dollars that his wife loves to get her hands on. So she lures Kyle into a romance, and executes her husband with an unregistered gun she bought on the black-market. Kyle is surprised that she would kill her detestable hubby, and thereby forgets about being a law officer and helps her bury the bullet-riddled body in the moonlit lake where they once went skinny dipping. Then the plot twists follow and the film in the last half-hour starts to get exciting. It's all about Kyle's libido and Rachel's need for money and love.
It's a B-film, with the overall effect of the film being better than Roy Carlson's script and Bailey's flat direction. Though Madeline Stowe's performance is more stiff than steamy, which is too bad since Ed Harris's performance was lethal. Yet it's still an easy film to take on its own merits--it sets a sultry mood.
REVIEWED ON 9/26/2002 GRADE: C+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
========== X-RAMR-ID: 32848 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 783670 X-RT-TitleID: 1049718 X-RT-SourceID: 873 X-RT-AuthorID: 1315 X-RT-RatingText: C+
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews