Day 60 -- Deadfall

Released: October 8th, 1993

Starring: Nicholas Cage, Michael Biehn, James Colburn, Sarah Trigger

Writer/Director: Christopher Coppola and Nick Vallelonga/Christopher Coppola

Description: After he accidentally kills his father, Mike, during a sting, Joe tries to carry out Mike's dying wish by recovering valuables that Mike's twin brother Lou stole from him years earlier.

[Review may contain spoilers. Please watch movie before reading, unless you don't care. Most of these films have already been released for a while, so they should be readily available.]

***

Well, this movie is the perfect ending to Nick Cage week. It had three factors that made it memorable: Terrible writing, terrible acting, and the most ridiculous Cage performance on his resume. I don't even know what to say about this "film".

"Deadfall" was co-written and directed by Cage's brother, Christopher Coppola. The story is that Chris and Nick used to shoot super-8 films as children, with the former directing and writing the score. Knowing that does help to explain why this movie is so poor, it felt like a film that you shoot with out any oversite or notes.

The film's plot involves twin brothers, who are both con-artists, and "cake".  At least that's what I picked up. But in all seriousness, the plot involves a diamond theft (I think?), but Joe (Biehn) is scammed by his Uncle Joe (Colburn). There are so many plot twist and flat out stupidity that the best way to sum it up is to let the Web site Ruined Endings (try?) to explain it.

"Joe Dolan did not fatally shoot his dad Mike, his old man faked his death to sabotage his brother Lou's diamond con with Dr. Lyme allowing Mike to pocket a cool $2 million from Lyme. Lou is killed in a shoot out with Lyme's followers and Joe learns that not only was Patsy (who was in the scam that 'took' Mike's life) in on it, but so was Diane who's (closet wig-wearing) beau...Eddie got boiled to death by Joe. Needless to say Joe's not amused at his pa and empties the cash out onto the streets leaving his delightful dad cursing him as he frantically scrabbles to pick up his wayward cash."

So, yeah that happened.

More importantly, I am discouraged by this poor attempt at a Film Noir. Everything about it is poorly executed, and would even be a bad parody movie. For a person that has experience with music scores, Chris Coppola dropped the ball on this one. The music is out of place as it tries to give a contemporary Noir sound to the film.

Each actor in the film was a different level of terrible. Biehn was the least atrocious, as he has the look and mannerisms to succeed in this type of film, but none of the talent. Taggart wasn't even close to passable as the femme-fatale as her motives were too obvious and any halfway intelligent man would have seen through them. The movie was saved by the fabulously awful performance by Cage, and the equally entertaining turn by Charlie Sheen. Those two appear to know that the movie was bad, and were looking to entertain themselves.

This movie is most blatant example of the notion that it's who you know in Hollywood, not how good you are, but I guess that's true in all walks of life. A few fun facts about "Deadfall", it currently holds a "0%" on Rotten Tomatoes, and it has the honor of having a "3.8" on IMDB. Even "Southland Tales" is over a 5 rating. With all of the panning it received, I have to believe that it was the Coppola name that got the movie released.

"Deadfall" probably wouldn't even have been well received in a pretentious film school class. It's an untalented writer and director trying to emulate the films he loved as a child, like Rob Zombie did in the Horror genre. Only Cage's outrageous performance as Mike makes this movie watchable because it will get you some cheap laughs.

Rating: 1/10 -- I've already spent too many words on this.