John Cusack and Rebecca Da Costa (Cinedigm)
As director David Grovic’s The Bag Man shuffles toward a predictable conclusion, mob boss Dragna (Robert DeNiro) says something unexpected. He recalls an episode of Full House where Jesse (John Stamos) goes bungee jumping with Becky (Lori Loughlin). “Changed my whole life.” The name of that episode is “Leap of Faith,” and it takes exactly that to get through this brutal, disjointed, self-conscious crime drama. But the movie is just strange enough to wake up for at irregular intervals.
Jack (John Cusack, whose agent has put him in dubious projects for years now) is a hit-man on a mission. Dragna instructs Jack to transport a black satchel to Room 13 of a seedy Bayou motel. Jack is ordered not to look in the bag.
Screenwriters Grovic and Paul Conway were inspired by a short story called “The Cat” (note the title of the movie) and based the film on an unproduced James Russo script. The filmmakers were also evidently inspired by the breadth of film history. Eagle-eyed moviegoers will already recognize a few classics from this basic set-up. The bag with unknown contents is a MacGuffin straight out of the 1955 film noir Kiss Me Deadly (and previously resurrected in Repo Man and Pulp Fiction). The motel .. well you won’t be surprised to find its seedy remoteness a variation on the Bates Motel, with Crispin Glover playing the part of Norman Bates in a wheelchair. (Glover’s scenes with Cusack suggest a reunion of 80s stars lamenting the sad state of affairs that have brought them down to this cinematic sub-basement.) I spent much of the movie counting off the self-conscious references: Blue Velvet, Joeph Losey’s The Servant, Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, and at least two David Fincher films, neither of which I should reveal in case somebody wants to see this movie.
The plot doesn’t move so much as lunge awkwardly. Even with his tragic back story, it doesn’t make sense for the brutal assassin to protect a blue-haired damsel in distress when he cooly dispatches anyone else in his way. But Cusack takes Jack seriously, his look of desperation the probably result of taking on one too many bad movies. DeNiro could play a mob boss in his sleep, and did just that in American Hustle, but his character, however oddly written, seems awake and unpredictable, albeit in the sense that he could summon up memories of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen at any given moment.
It’s a lousy pomo pastiche, but those unexpected moments make The Bag Man not completely boring, if not remotely good. For instance, what music would you play behind the shot of a gangly, mannish prostitute strutting past a neon-soaked motel on a steamy Louisiana night? Did you answer Nick Drake? Of course you didn’t, even if you love the singer-songwriter’s fragile oeuvre. It could be a choice that’s so-wrong-it’s-right, but it seems like just another example of the self consciousness that weighs down the movie. If The Bag Man were any good, a clever promoter could hand out baggage claim tags instead of movie tickets. But this is one piece of luggage best left unclaimed.
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The Bag Man
Directed by David Grovic
Written by David Grovic and Paul Conway
With John Cusack, Rebecca Da Costa, Robert DeNiro
Rated R for violence, sexual content and language
Opens today at AMC Hoffman
