Outside Ozona (1998)

Don't compare this with Pulp Fiction, or any other movie for that matter. Just watch it, not as a critic, but as a peeping tom looking into the real lives of real people. There are many times I prefer unknown actors in a movie because I can avoid preconceptions and watch the characters, not the actors. Yet even though I knew quite a few of these actors, I was able to lose myself in the people they created -- real people, like many I've met, hung with, talked to, cared about. I enjoyed this film, the laughs, surprises, interactions and shocks and I think reg'lar fellas (and gals) will too. It's kicking around Showtime, and you should catch it.

The Skokie Ripper has picked up killing women and stealing their cars along the Midwest and the film centers on various characters that he will affect in one way or another as their lives intersect in this interesting(I thought)character study.The thoughtful, existential screenplay was written by director Cardone and deals with topics such as regret, loneliness, fate, and death.Outside Ozona might make an interesting companion piece with Cardone's desert Midwestern vampire tale, The Forsaken.The film is filled with colorful, often profane dialogue. Could be Cardone's most ambitious script as a writer and he rarely has had such a competent cast to work with which included Robert Forster(as a gentle truck driver), Kevin Pollack(as an out-of-work circus clown), Penelope Ann Miller(..cast against type as Pollack's dim-bulb stripper-girlfriend), Taj Mahal(as a disgruntled and troubled radio jock whose voice is an important part of the film), Meat Loaf(as Mahal's radio manager who can not stop his employee from letting off steam on the air in a revolt against having to cover two shifts because another didn't come into work), Sherilyn Fenn(in a minor role as a possible victim of an unlikely serial killer), Swoosie Kurtz(as a diner waitress)& David Paymer(as a bible-quoting, fanatical sociopath murdering females on the road in his twisted, warped view of working for the Lord). Kateri Walker is a beautiful Navajo woman Forster befriends as she plans to take her dying mother, Effie(Lois Red Elk)to New Mexico before her death. The film basically follows the characters as they converse about their lives and what possibilities have passed them by.

Kind of unpromising material, if you think about it. A dozen people in different vehicles thrumming through the Oklahoma night while a mad killer is offing women and leaving their corpses holding their own hearts. (Wow.) What an opportunity to slather Technicolor Red Number Nine all over the screen.Instead the writer and director have given us a series of character studies that, if schematic, are at least not in-your-face revolting. The violence is no more than is required and the acting is pretty good. Especially good are Robert Forster as a good-natured truck driver, Lois Red Elk as a Navaho mother who wants to see the Gulf of Mexico before she dies, and Penelope Anne Miller as a sleazy but compliant lap dancer. Complaints from others that the script is overwritten, so that the dialog sounds speechy, while understandable, should compare this attempt at naturalism with the arty "Night on Earth." I have a complaint too, though. That damned dog! The doomed mutt that Forster picks up at a truck stop. We already KNOW that Forster's Odell is a nice guy. We don't need his saving the dog. Makes you feel as if it weren't enough that Cardone, the writer and director, had touched our hearts -- he had to cut them out and hand them to us.

This is a nice, witty, emotional, film! It is a drama/comedy/action intertwining 4 stories into one, all wrapped around a radio program. This film is a nice surprise as it has nice characters who you want to see get ahead, and nice use of scenery. It is a film that will never bore you, but it will never draw you in, either. It is not as good as pulp fiction, but if you expected it to be, you must be silly. Watch it with an open mind and you will be pleasantly surprised! It is a treasure!