FROGS FOR SNAKES (1998)

Greg's Views from the Upcoming movies website at:
http://upcomingmovies.com/frogsforsnakes.html

Cast: Robbie Coltrane, Harry Hamlin, Ian Hart, Barbara Hershey, John Leguizamo, Lisa Marie, Debi Mazar, Ron Perlman, Clarence Williams III, Nick Chinlund, David Deblinger, Zak Kerkoulas, Sabrina Passuntino, Mike Starr, Justin Theroux

Director/Writer: Amos Poe (Alphabet City)

Distributor: Artisan Entertainment

Premise: This is the tale of a loanshark (Coltrane) and his debt collectors who are planning a theatrical production of David Mamet's "American Buffalo" on the side. One of them, who is also the shark's ex-wife (Hershey) tires of this kind of life, and plans to break free.

Genre: Comedy/Crime

Official Production Site: Shooting Gallery

Release Date: May 21st, 1999 (limited)

Video Release Date: October 26th, 1999

Five years after the release of Pulp Fiction, the wave of ironic crime comedies has subsided a bit now, and so that places the release of Frogs for Snakes as being a bit more original and distinct than it might've been if it was released a few years back. In a way, the combination of theater and crime makes this movie a bit like The Full Monty (amateurs dreaming of stage glory), or maybe more appropriately Waiting for Guffman.

One thing I like about this film is that the center is apparently on the female characters, with the male players in more supporting parts. That's a fairly unique angle to modern crime movies (well, there was Bound), and that might be something for which people will know this film.

Page Updated: 11/12/99

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FROGS FOR SNAKES

Review by Derek Elley
Daily Variety, March 26, 1998

BERLIN (Variety) - Billing itself as "a neo-noir comic thriller," indie maverick Amos Poe's latest exercise is more like "Putz Fiction" mainlining David Mamet.

Stuffed with iconic casting, and self-consciously smart to a fault, "Frogs for Snakes" will turn off as many as it ultimately seduces, though for those who stay the course the picture does come together in its final reels. Film festivals are likely to bite at this jokey, actor-led jeu, but expect a tough sell in commercial theaters - partly because, through no fault of his own, Poe's originally distinctive style has since been appropriated by more mainstream moviemakers. Trimming by some 15 minutes would also help.

The picture plunges straight in as it means to continue with a blackly comic pre-credits sequence of a broad in a blond wig busting into the apartment of a lowlife in the middle of a drugs 'n' bondage session. Self-same broad turns out to be Eva (Barbara Hershey), a struggling legit actress, who does collecting jobs on the side for her ex-husband, loan shark Al (Robbie Coltrane). During the day, she waitresses at a Lower Manhattan diner owned by Quint (Ian Hart).

Also in Eva's demimonde is new boyfriend Zip (John Leguizamo), wannabe actress Myrna (Lisa Marie), Al's blond-trash girlfriend, Simone (Debi Mazar), hood-poseur Gascone (Ron Perlman) and Al's driver-cum-hit-man, UB (David Deblinger). Eva tells Al that she wants to get out of collecting and acting, and live in a house with a picket fence with her young son, Augie (Zak Kerkoulas). He asks her to do one more, highly paid job, finding a missing $600,000 stolen from him by Flav (Justin Theroux).

That sets off a highly convoluted, noirish yarn in which most of the cast end up double-crossing and shooting one another. A subplot, which becomes inextricably intertwined with the main one, is Al's desire to turn theater impresario by staging a production of Mamet's "American Buffalo." Unknown to Eva, Al has offered the role of Teach to UB, on the condition he kill Zip; things get really nasty.

Most of this, including who is actually who - becomes clear very slowly: even the main titles appear almost 20 minutes in. Poe's main game is to throw together a loose collection of deadbeats and genre stereotypes, and blur the line between the roles they're self-consciously playing in the pic and their aspirations as actors to play similar roles onstage. The running joke of characters suddenly playing classic movie scenes (often badly, as in Myrna's case with "The Hustler") will test audiences' knowledge as well as their patience; some, as in Klensch's death scene, are genuinely funny, especially in Hamlin's self-mocking performance; others simply hold up the movie, especially when the scene being played is not immediately clear to the viewer. (The German-subtitled print shown at Berlin helped by italicizing the speeches.)

If you can get past all the post-modern noir elements and casual bursts of violence, there's a germ of a nice idea here - an underworld milieu populated by people who knew each other in acting class, and who would literally kill to get a good role. In its final reels, climaxing in a bar room bloodbath followed by a liberating finale, the movie takes some sort of emotional shape, after labyrinthine plotting in its midsection that's really an excuse for lack of character development. Poe is certainly well served by his cast, who throw themselves into their roles when they are often joshing their own screen images. Scottish thespian Coltrane, sporting an impressive American accent, has the right physical presence as Al and the authority to go with it; his scenes with Hershey, also fine, are among the best in the movie, played for dark laughs but also genuine feeling. Hamlin (in for only one scene, late on), Perlman and Clarence Williams III all have fun with their lowlife characters, and Mazar is sharp as the gold-digging Simone. Lisa Marie and Hart have relatively small roles.

Production values are superior indie, with Enrique Chediak's photography richly colored and Candice Donnelly's costumes heightening the exaggerated atmosphere. Though soundtrack shows some care in sound design, some of the dialogue is less than clear. Viewers are also recommended to stay seated until the very end of the final crawl: this is one movie that simply doesn't want to quit.