I knew literally nothing about this movie going in, aside from it being directed by Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, Being There), and a few of its cast members. Summarizing the story would be fruitless. Suffice it to say, it’s convoluted as hell and I couldn’t tell you anything specifically about it because I don’t remember, and the movie ended 20 minutes ago. I was completely lost during this film, and the arcane, frustratingly delivered dialogue just wasn’t helping. The scenes fluctuate between sentimental and comedic at will, but whatever Ashby is going for typically comes across as overly complex. As a result, nothing he says resonates and no single occurrence has any real weight.
Take, for instance, the climactic round of blackjack. I know the basic rules of blackjack, and I’m not completely unclear about the more complex aspects of it. But I hope you read me clearly when I tell you I had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on in this scene. Ashby attempts to make the scene go so fast, with characters spewing jargon and cards flipping at such an astounding rate that the audience won’t have time to think about what they’re seeing, but the only thing I can see happening here is him completely losing them. After a while of trying to keep up with the game I simply gave up and waited for the scene to end. There could have been a dozen mistakes made and I wouldn’t have been able to tell, nor would I have cared.
To Ashby’s credit, the song he uses during an on-foot chase sequence was cool enough to make me oblivious – if only for a moment - to how stupid the scene actually was. It’s the laziest, least enthralling foot chase I think I’ve ever seen in a movie, and makes me wonder if audiences back in 1982 were as bored as I was.
Lookin’ to Get Out is a drab, thoroughly uninteresting story that tries to save itself through character relations. Jon Voight gives a pretty true-to-life performance in how he goes off the handle under frustration, but really I just couldn’t care. The plot is so middling and needlessly complex that it sucks the energy out of the drama. It’s not particularly dramatic and not particularly amusing to begin with, so what you’re left with is an all-around tiresome 2 hours highlighted by a decent score and a good lead performance. That’s just not enough to justify the slow pace and brain-aching conundrum of a script. There’s something here trying to get out, something personal below the surface struggling to get noticed, but I’ll be damned if it’s as resonant as the film’s numerous disappointing faults.
The disc looks and sounds all right, given that the master is from a rare print of the extended version of the film, that’s been in storage for 25 years. It’s got a cast retrospective piece. It’s a little more interesting than you might think. But it doesn’t make me appreciate the film much more, and it also serves to remind me of the shot where you can see the dolly operator in a mirror. Aside from that, there’s a trailer and various subtitles. The best special feature, really, is unadvertised. It’s a rather heartfelt insert from Jon Voight talking about the film, but more than that, talking about Hal Ashby, from the perspective of a friend. He briefly goes over Hal’s lost battle with cancer, and you can tell he considers his time with Ashby truly meaningful. It’s a shame I didn’t like the movie as much as the insert.
[Minor spoiler ahead]
The back of the case uses the tagline from both The Sting II and Bowfinger, indicating to us that the con is on. Well if I hadn’t read that I never ever would have suspected there to even be a con, which would have made the last minute of the film a lot more enjoyable.
"Lookin' to Get Out" is on sale June 23, 2009 and is rated R. Comedy, Drama. Directed by Hal Ashby. Written by Jon Voight, Al Schwartz. Starring Ann Margret, Burt Young, Jon Voight.
