From today's Oregonian....
The best thing about this job is championing easy-to-miss small movies that dare to be different ("JCVD," "Let the Right One In"). The worst thing about this job is pouring haterade on easy-to-miss small movies that dare to be different and (in my opinion) fail spectacularly. Writing about these films with any degree of honesty feels a bit like punching kittens.
"Dark Streets," unfortunately, falls in the latter category. It's a cool-looking, low-budget attempt at making an impressionistic film-noir blues musical, and if the filmmakers had spent one-tenth as much time on their dream project's screenplay as they did on the music and art direction, they might have had something special.
The story, expanded from a stage musical, is set in a 1930s fever-dream world that looks like a puree of "Moulin Rouge!" and "Dark City." Nightclub owner Chaz (Gabriel Mann of "Mad Men") is a dull fop with a pencil mustache whose energy-executive father died under mysterious circumstances. Chaz runs afoul of every obvious film-noir cliché -- a hidden pile of money, a mysterious note, evil politicians, a crooked cop (Elias Koteas), a femme fatale (Izabella Miko), a troubled singer with a heart of gold (Bijou Phillips) and an African-American emcee who speaks exclusively in wise-but-hardboiled truisms (Toledo Diamond).
The producers and director Rachel Samuels ("The Suicide Club") try to bury these clichés in blues music and art direction that are fairly impressive, considering the budget. Budding cinematographers could probably study the way Samuels uses lenses, light, offbeat props and existing architecture to create a feeling of lushness using minimal resources. Half the movie is shot from low angles so the ornate ceilings of Los Angeles' historic Tower Theater can do much of the atmospheric heavy lifting, and there's a soft focus to the edges of the frame that looks like either a dream or a really cool projectionist's mistake.
Unfortunately, two problems kill the movie dead. First, Gabriel Mann's Chaz (who looks uncannily like k.d. lang) comes off as a total lightweight. Any charisma this actor has is swallowed by the film's overwhelming atmosphere -- and the fact that two gorgeous, vivid women fight for his affections is a bigger mystery than the identity of Chaz's father's killer.
Second, and much worse, the script is just all kinds of terrible. The characters are hollow mannequins telling a thin, depressing story that's less of a noir and more of a simple-minded bummer full of barely connected scenes and stunningly empty dialogue. Every other line is something like "A bullet's kiss is a cold way to meet betrayal" or "This city's cold, man -- it just grabs you by the throat and it don't let go" or "Delilahs are and always will be the root of every sap's demise." An end-credits dedication to the displaced musicians of New Orleans feels unintentionally funny following a movie this slight.
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C-minus; 83 minutes; rated R for some sexual content, drug use and brief violent images.
'Dark Streets' (The Oregonian, Dec. 12, 2008)
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