Forgotten Films: "American Perfekt" (1997) and "Diamond Men" (2001)

Phil Nugent — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

The addition of Robert Forster to the cast of Heroes may not be enough to save the faded series, but it'll keep us from deleting it from our DVR for a while. We admit it, we love this guy, almost as much as Quentin Tarantino does. (We'd be willing to consider the possibility that we love him even more than Tarantino does, but let's face it: presuming that you might love something even as much as Tarantino does is a risky thing to do.) It was, of course, QT who put Forster back on the radar in 1987 by giving him the best role of his career as the sage but seducable bail bondsman Max Cherry and tucking his performance into a movie, Jackie Brown, that actually got booked into theaters. But there are other people who were rooting for the man, and a year before Jackie Brown, Forster played the male lead in a smart, quirky little neo-noir called American Perfekt that bypassed theaters but caught a lot of people's attention when it made it to cable. The movie, written and directed by Paul Chart, is a sinister-edged road movie about a criminal psychiatrist (Forster) who decides to take some personal time and conduct an experiment in which he decides to leave all important decisions to the flip of a coin. Inevitably, the decisions come to include matters of life and death. Perfekt has its own weird vein of dark humor and a clutch of striking performances by the kind of actors who ought to be carrying big movies on a regular basis but have become more likely to find themselves playing third fiddle in a remake of Basic Instinct (such as David Thewlis) or getting a role on The Sopranos only to be replaced by another actress after your first short scene has hit the airwaves (such as Fairuza Balk). Balk enters the picture after Forster's first road partner, Amanda Plummer, has Mysteriously Disappeared. The movie has slowly established itself an Internet cult, some of whose members got very excited, and in some cases indignant, when the coin-flip business turned up in No Country for Old Men. Presumably all these people had never heard of Two-Face and subsequently died of massive heart attacks while watching The Dark Knight.

Perfekt gives the viewer a choice taste of Forster at his most affable and untrustworthy. After his Oscar-nominated turn in Jackie Brown, more filmmakers started seeking Forster out with hopes of tapping the vulnerable, world-worn quality that Tarantino showcased so well. The best of these films may be Diamond Men, a gentle little charmer written and directed by Dan Cohen. (This film did actually make it into theaters. Unfortunately, it opened a couple of weeks after September 11, 2001, which was not a great time for small, underpublicized movies.) It too is a road movie: Forster plays Eddie, a widowed salesman for a jewelry company who spends his life tooling from one loyal customer to the next in the Pennsylvania area he has built up over the years. After a heart attack, he's saddled with a younger, brasher partner (Donnie Wahlberg), ostensibly because the company's insurance carrier will no longer let him serve as sole custodian of the merchandise in transit, though you'd have to be dumber than Eddie's boss thinks he is not to recognize that his real function is to teach the ropes to his future replacement before being shoved out the door. And if you don't expect the Wahlberg character to begin to warm to the older guy and care more about him than about his own career future, you must not have seen many movies. But Dan Cohen worked in the diamond trade himself, taking over his father's business after his death, and the movie has the kind of affectionate feeling for and detailed knowledge of a way of life that can give a picture like this enough individuality to transcend its own formula. Eventually, Eddie find romance with Bess Armstrong, as a middle-aged New Age Buddhist ex-hooker. I remember a stretch there in the 1980s when Bess Armstrong's face seemed like a hard thing to avoid if you wanted to watch TV or go to the movies; Diamond Men was just about the first time I'd seen or thought of her since they canceled My So-Called Life, and I don't think I've seen or thought about her since, but the sheer weirdness of her role here must have gotten to her, because she's rather appealing once you abandon the idea that she's going to attack Eddie with an icepick that she keeps under a pillow. Then again, she probably benefited from being partnered with Forster. Both these movies incorporate the special quality that has helped keep Forster's career alive even though it may have made him seem like less of a bet for superstardom than other actors whose reserves of charisma made them seem unapproachable: he just seems like really good company, whether you're in the movie with him or watching him in the audience. Like a lot of great character actors, he makes being fun to watch seem like a lost art.

Movies We Missed: My Life Without Me (2003)

Peter Smith — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Mark Ruffalo has had an interesting career. He became an indie poster boy and critical darling overnight with the release of You Can Count On Me. He did his bank account a favor as the leading man in regrettable movies like 13 Going On 30 and Just Like Heaven. But he balanced those with ultra-indies like We Don’t Live Here Anymore and XX/XY. He’s also played detectives for big-name directors (Jane Campion, Michael Mann, David Fincher) to results varying from questionable to near perfect. As Ruffalo returns to the screen this week as a troubled father with a haunting secret in Terry George’s Reservation Road, we wanted to look back at one of his most honest and exposed performances, in the rarely seen My Life Without Me, where he plays a man who unknowingly falls in love with a terminally ill, married woman.

Why we missed it:

If it weren’t for the help of Pedro Almodovar, Isabel Coixet’s English language debut may never have been seen very far outside of Spain. Even with Almodovar’s name attached as a "presenter," the terminal-cancer plotline was a hard sell.

The cast of talented but little-known actors didn’t immediately draw attention.

Why we should have known:

Ruffalo's presence should have raised some eyebrows.

The trailer hints at the hopeful and inventive tone of the film.

Why we ended up kicking ourselves:

Sarah Polley and Ruffalo both give knockout performances without a single moment that feels forced or false. Together they convey the rush of discovering love, and the heartbreak of its eventual loss.Scott Speedman and Leonor Watling prove effortless in supporting roles.

The potentially heavy material is treated with skill and imagination. Coixet, working from a short story from author Nanci Kincaid, looks for the real.

Why we may have been better off without it:

There are unnecessary cameos (Debbie Harry) and an annoying co-worker (Amanda Plummer). But those are easily forgiven.

— Bryan Whitefield

The Screengrab : amanda plummer

Forgotten Films: "American Perfekt" (1997) and "Diamond Men" (2001)

Movies We Missed: My Life Without Me (2003)