Kalifornia | Brad Pitt, Juliette Lewis | Great update of Lupino's *The Hitch-Hiker*

Kalifornia | Brad Pitt, Juliette Lewis | Juliette Lewis is the best actress!

DVDs:

Kalifornia

	Kalifornia Brad Pitt, Juliette Lewis MGM (Video & DVD), 2000 average customer review:based on 80 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great update of Lupino's *The Hitch-Hiker*

In 1953 Ida Lupino directed a noirish black-and-white road thriller titled *The Hitch-Hiker*. If you want to know more about that movie go here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6305636486/104-2636360-7886367?v=glance

Forty years later Dominic Sena directed the neo-noirish color road thriller *Kalifornia*. The bare-bones plot basics of the two movies are the same: a couple of folks driving through the desert on their way to California give a ride to a stranger who turns out to be a serial killer. But Sena and his crew build upon the simple though effective *Hitch-Hiker* plot to construct a complex, bleaker and more chilling vision of a carload of people on their way deeper and deeper into hell.

Usually David Duchovny's acting fails to move me. But in *Kalifornia* he's perfect as laid-back magazine writer Brian Kessler, wannabe author of a book on famous American serial killers. Kessler embraces a liberal, pop-psych, sympathetic view of the monsters in human form who murder again and again. Always ready to argue that serial killers can be understood if we lay aside our prejudices and try, Kessler aspires to be counted among the few rare intellectuals who really do understand them. I liked the line Earlie Grace says about how "Brian" becomes "brain" if the i and the a are switched. That sums up Kessler well--he floats through life like a brain-shaped balloon filled with helium. Earlie seizes Brian by his string--his ambition to become a famous author--and drags him into a liberal intellectual's worst nightmare.

Kessler's girlfriend, a mannish yet insecure art photographer in black leather named Carrie, is a stand-out role by Michelle Forbes. The relationship she and Duchovny play out is postmodern in a very believable way. Cool, sexy...yet empty.

It's a cliche to use the word awesome, but it's the only one that does justice to Brad Pitt as Earlie Grace, the killer on the road whose mind is squirming like a toad. He's a jaguar. That's what I thought of: Earlie is a big jungle cat, watchful of everything around him with his fixed, glittering eyes that betray no emotion except when the urge to kill is upon him. Earlie's tone of voice falls somewhere between a growl, a snort, and an edgy cat's howl. He's usually hulking and lazy, yet when he needs to be, he's blindlingly swift. When he strikes, it's not with the object of enjoying the violence. His goal is to make his prey dead as fast as he can. Yes, just like a big cat that bites its prey once, hard, on the back of the neck to crush the spine. Yet Earlie can be friendly, even kind. But the people around him, no matter how close he seems to them, are never far from the category of his prey.

Earlie's white trash girlfriend Adele is played convincingly by Juliette Lewis. She's simple, kind-hearted damaged goods with a need to be protected and to see the best in people. That's why she's with Earlie. The friendship that forms between Adele and Carrie is touching.

*Kalifornia* is the kind of thriller that spills over into a horror film. Whenever the plot comes to a point where "either this or that could happen," what usually happens is the worst thing. Earlie tells the nice guy attendant in the gas station he robs that he has to kill him. The guy is so polite that Earlie changes his mind. But then the poor guy has to go and ask Earlie to hand him his Bible from behind the counter. Bad move. Why, we don't quite understand, since Earlie professes belief in God himself. But that's Earlie. You can't predict what a jungle predator will do next.

There are some clever, even symbolic touches in *Kalifornia*. It's interesting that the action culminates in Dreamland, where atom bombs were tested in the Nevada desert. Carrie, the feisty postmodern woman, all attitude with very little substance, ends up like one of the mute test dummies frozen in time, its only purpose being to get blown to pieces. Notice what she does when, at the end, she makes her move against Earlie.

I rate *Kalifornia* 5 stars because 1) it's an improvement upon an earlier great film, because 2) Duchovny got through to me for once with his performance, and because 3) Brad Pitt scares the hell out of me as Earlie Grace.

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Juliette Lewis is the best actress!

I enjoyed watching this movie over and over again....
Juliette Lewis played her role as Brad Pitts's girlfriend and she acted so good for the movie.
Real good and she should get her best actress for this movie!
I love her and she also played good in Hystercial Blindness with Urm Thurman too!

"Let's get sum reebs, that's beer spelled backwards."

I love Juliette Lewis. I wish she were my girlfriend. But, besides that.
One of my friends said this was the first movie that Brad Pitt made in which he wasn't a pretty boy, and believe me, he ain't.
And ain't is a word.
If you like twisted red-neck serial killers, you'll love this movie. It is also a black humor movie too.

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Cookie Monster Voice: "K is for killer, that's good enough for me!"

The first clue to "Kalifornia" being about serial killers comes from the title itself. It starts with a "K" rather than a "C." For some reason, I thought of the song by the Eagles, Hotel California...but you'll note there's no "K" in the title. There are a myriad of theories, engouh to fill a Sesame Street song, as to why the movie is named that way: "K" is for Kafka, Kali, or even Klan (as in, the KKK). For me, it stands for "killing" as well as a fairytale land that doesn't really exist. In essence, all the characters fantasize about going to Kalifornia, but the real California is far, far worse.

Fresh off of his Mulder days, David Duchovny stars as Brian Kessler, an author who has pitched himself as an expert on serial killers. Only he's not, and now he has to write the definitive book on the subject. If the name sounds familiar, it's because this is yet another riff on the venerable Rob Ressler, the FBI expert on serial killers. Carrie Laughlin (the delectable Michelle Forbes), Brian's live-in girlfriend and exhibitionist photographer, accompanies him on his journey to California. The idea is to kill two birds with one stone--Brian will visit sites of famous serial murders as they crisscross the country and Carrie will be able to find a better market for her extreme photos.

There's just one problem: they're broke. With a car that gets awful gas mileage, they decide to bring another couple along to save expenses. That couple is the white trash combination of murderous Early Grayce (played with simmering rage by Brad Pitt, in his finest role) and Adele Corners (Juliette Lewis, chewing up the scenery with her naiveté).

On the surface, the plot sounds like a pilot for a comedy sitcom. But Kalifornia is anything but a comedy.

Kalifornia is supposedly about serial killers, but it isn't really interested in delving into the dark mind of the murders. The joke is on us. Kalifornia is really about rich folk and po' folk, playing on all the fears that lurk behind every driver who has ever parked at a truck stop in the middle of nowhere. Early is less a serial killer than a brutal thug, killing those who irritate, annoy, enrage, or inconvenience him. Kalifornia tries to portray Early as one of the monsters Brian is supposedly studying, but we know better-Early is utterly unscrupulous, the basest form of humanity that does what it has to in order to survive.

In the beginning, Early hides his murders. He indoctrinates Brian into the ways of shooting, drinking, and womanizing. Brian almost looks up to Early as a "man's man." Carrie, in the mean time, slowly uncovers just how much of a beast Early really is. And yet her chic photos and fascination with erotica leads to a curious attraction to him. Once she finds out how bad Early really is, that attraction turns to revulsion.

Brian and Carrie have a striking resemblance, in both appearance and mannerisms, to my wife and I, so we watched the film with more interest than it might have warranted (that, and Forbes spends a lot of time in her underwear). But Duchovny has always been a deadpan-delivery kind of guy, and when he appears in the film sporting two earrings...well, let's just say that an extra earring does not a good actor make. Forbes is appropriately snooty and standoffish, sexy and domineering. Lewis plays the mentally deficient hick too well, such that she's borderline irritating. And then there's Pitt.

Pitt is fantastic as a scruffy, steely-eyed wild man, completely untamed and unrestrained in his basest impulses. Pitt's good looks are submerged beneath an explosion of facial hair, but it's his eyes that blaze out from beneath his cap that speak for him. To quote Tombstone, Early "has got a great big hole, right in the middle of himself. And he can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it." But Early's no serial killer. Every time a cell phone rings in a theater (I'm looking at YOU), every time a driver cuts us off on the road, every time someone disrespects the most basic courtesies...when we think, "I'd like to kill that guy," Early doesn't think. He just goes and does it. We all understand his motives too well.

Kalifornia is a little too long, a little too meandering, and a little too contrived. But watching Pit tear up the scenery (literally and figuratively) is worth the price of admission alone.

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Brad Pitt's best role!

Brad Pitt, Juliette Lewis, David Duchovny and Michelle Forbes. Now that's a pretty impressive list of actors for a movie. And as I stated in the title, this is Brad Pitt's best roll. The story is equally good. There really is nothing about this movie that I did not find above average. If you like suspence thrillers you will love this movie.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

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